Wolf Howling

The Benefits Of A Public School Education In San Francisco

2012-02-16T06:49:00.000-05:00

SF schools are now acting in loco parentis, combining it with indoctrination. It must be read to be believed. From SFGate.com:

Galileo High School celebrated Valentine's Day in a style befitting San Francisco on Tuesday as hundreds of students lined up to "marry" their sweethearts regardless of gender, sexual orientation or relationship status.

They then learned how to correctly put on a condom using goggles that gave them a drunken view of things, and played a variety of games that promoted safer sex.

The school's annual "Love Fest" drew hundred of teens in the school's central courtyard.

. . . The event, sponsored by the Gay Straight Alliance and the Wellness Center, tried to promote acceptance and tolerance at school and safe decisions in the intimate moments that could happen at that age.

At one table, health teacher Raina Meyers put goggles on students that made their vision slightly blurry, simulating a drunken state. She then told them to put a condom on a wooden penis.

Most of the students left air in the condom tip, which could lead to breakage, and that prompted an instructional rebuke from Meyers. . . .

A handful of students milled about at the safer sex exhibits, but the biggest draw was the wedding table, where students fidgeted as they waited for their nuptials.

They signed a photocopied marriage certificate and said a quick "I do" when a student officiant asked about taking the other person as spouse.

The marriage was sealed with optional, one-size-fits-all plastic gold bands.

Many students admitted they decided to participate after teachers said they would get extra credit. . . .

Everything about this story is wrong and objectionable on multiple levels. But that last bit is the topper. Extra Credit? Extra credit for what discipline? English, science, math, history? Someone explain to me how a school is possibly going to up the grade of one of these young future lefties of America from a C to a B in any academic discipline because they learned how to put a condom on an erect penis while drunk? Honestly, it is getting perilously close to the point where its time to burn it all down and start over from scratch.

(H/T The Daily Gator)

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Rep. Allen West: "I'm Here To Set The Record Straight"

2012-02-16T06:25:00.001-05:00

Rep. Allen West's speech at CPAC - pure red meat.

I see an unlimited future for this man.

Demonizing Their Opponents

2012-02-16T05:58:00.000-05:00

One of the memes on this blog is that the left doesn't debate their opponents, they demonize them. And here is Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters making my point . . . literally.

(H/T Bluegrass Pundit)

Dr. Sanity has a great post up on the left's methods of argument and psychological denial. It is well worth a read.

The left is a wasteland of vacuity that stands today at the apogee of their power. If the U.S. is to survive, they need to be beaten into the dustbin of history.

Obama's Unilateral Disarmament Of The U.S.

2012-02-16T02:07:00.000-05:00

In 1967, during the height of the cold war with the Soviet Union, America had 31,255 nuclear warheads. By the time the Soviet Union fell, we had 22,217 nuclear warheads. By 2010, that number had been reduced to 5,113 warheads. Obama is now considering whether to unilaterally reduce our nuclear arsenal to 300 warheads.

To put that in perspective, that would leave us with approximately the same number of nuclear weapons as France, just a few more than China, about two times as many as Pakistan, and about twenty times less than Russia. Obama would see us go from overwhelming nuclear superiority to something akin to nuclear parity with other nuclear powers. He would do so without respect to tomorrow's threats, nor in consideration of how such unilateral disarmament will effect the perception of either our allies who depend on our nuclear umbrella or, more importantly, our opponents, who must consider it.

In an AEI Center For Defense Studies working paper, written at the time that Obama was promising to significantly reduce our nuclear arsenal as part of START to just under 2,000 warheards, the authors wrote:

The third atomic age demands American nuclear capabilities that are flexible, adaptable and resilient in the face of new challenges and emerging threats, the likely rise of additional nuclear powers and the expansion of nuclear strike capabilities among a number of existing nuclear weapon states. Current American policy, however, seems to be moving in the opposite direction. U.S. nuclear forces are being reduced; new nuclear weapons, capabilities and missions have been proscribed; the conditions under which the United States would threaten nuclear retaliation have been narrowed; the enduring value of nuclear weapons is being challenged; and the vision of a nuclear-free world is being heralded as a desirable – and ultimately achievable – goal, if only the United States leads the way.

We are concerned with the trends evident in the evolution of U.S. nuclear policy. They suggest to us a highly questionable premise; namely, that the mere possession of weapons that have helped keep the peace for more than 60 years is more dangerous to American security today than the motivations of those who may possess – or actually use – them tomorrow. In addition, we suggest that our current nuclear course reflects a failure to understand America’s rise as the dominant global security ―provider.‖ Influence in world affairs has resulted not simply from its liberal philosophy, its commitment to democratic principles and the rule of law or its military-technical superiority in conventional forces, but from the skillful management and prudent application of its nuclear muscle – as both a deterrent to attack and a guarantor of security for others. The implications of this suggest that America has grown weary of the global responsibility it has assumed as a result of its nuclear might and would prefer to shed the burdens associated with global leadership. And this portends additional challenges to America’s supremacy by those who would see U.S. policy as a further sign of American weakness and decline and an opportunity to restructure world affairs more to their own liking.

As a young campus leftie at Columbia, Obama penned an article that reads as a paean to the anti-war agenda of 80's campus radicals. At one point in the article, "Breaking the War Mentality," Obama argued for a nuclear freeze - a movement we now know was started by Soviet agents in Western Europe - and criticized Reagan for pushing ahead with new weapons systems. And in 2009, Obama, as our new leader announced the penultimate leftie fantasy, a world without nuclear weapons. Obama would bet our national defense, and the defense of the free West, on pure fairy dust. Nonetheless, it appears that Obama is trying to make good towards that campaign promise, irrespective of how dangerous it might be for the U.S. or, that matter, the world.

Obama's desire to disarm America also must be looked at in Obama's much larger plan to minimize work on our ABM shield and gut our conventional forces. The game he is playing is incredibly dangerous. At a minimum, if he is allowed to continue ahead with all of his plans, it will mean that the Pax American of the past 60 years is rapidly coming to a close. It will create a power vacuum that most assuredly will be filled by others - Russia in Europe, China in the East, and Iran in the Middle East seem the most likely bets. And it will lead to nuclear proliferation throughout the world as allies no longer feel protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella, and opponents may be inspired to overcome our much depleted umbrella. Such is the cost to fund Obama's entitlements and his reelection campaign.

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The President's "Reckless" FY 2013 Budget

2012-02-15T18:02:00.000-05:00

I have held off blogging on the President's most recently proposed budget, waiting for Rep. Paul Ryan to do the heavy lifting. And of course he has. This from Rep. Ryan's site:

“President Obama’s irresponsible budget is a recipe for a debt crisis and the decline of America. His refusal to honestly confront our nation’s most pressing challenges does real harm to the economic security of millions of American families. The $1.9 trillion tax increase proposed in his budget will make it harder for businesses to create jobs and for workers to spur economic growth.

This budget does nothing to prevent the bankruptcy of critical programs, threatening the health and retirement security of current and future seniors. Worse, it continues the President’s policy of letting an unaccountable board of bureaucrats cut Medicare in ways that will lead to denied care for seniors. The broken promises and recycled gimmicks contained in this budget have dramatically widened this President’s growing credibility deficit.

Our families, seniors, children and grandchildren deserve better than this reckless budget and this dismal failure of leadership. As Chairman of the House Budget Committee, I will continue to work with my colleagues – from both parties where possible – to advance bold solutions that lift our crushing burden of debt and ensure a future of opportunity, growth and prosperity.”

---

Key facts from the President’s budget:

Spends Too Much:
$47 trillion of government spending over the next decade
Proposes a net increase over current spending projections

Taxes Too Much:
$1.9 trillion in new taxes
Raises taxes, not to pay down the debt, but to fuel more government spending

Borrows Too Much:
Four straight years of trillion-dollar-plus deficits; no plan to reduce the debt
Gross debt at the end of FY22: $25.9 trillion

Budget Gimmicks & Broken Promises
Overstates new deficit reduction by taking credit for savings already enacted
Exploits discredited budget gimmick by “not spending” nearly $1 trillion that was never going to be spent

And the following is Rep. Ryan's opening statement today, courtesy of Powerline, during the House Budget Committee hearing on the President's FY 2013 budget:

Welcome all, to this important hearing.

I’d like to thank our witness today, Mr. Zients, for coming to us under difficult circumstances.

With the departure of Mr. Lew from OMB just last month, we understand that you are testifying on short notice, and we recognize the difficulty of that.

And unfortunately, your job is even more difficult than usual – you are in the position of having to defend a budget that essentially dodges the most difficult challenges our country faces.

The New York Times has reported that this budget is, quote, “more a platform for the president’s re-election campaign than a legislative proposal.” After a careful review, it’s hard to disagree.

The Associated Press has reported – accurately in my view – that this budget, quote, “[takes] a pass on reining in government growth.”

Instead, it leaves the drivers of our debt – namely, the unsustainable growth of entitlement spending – quote, “largely unchecked.” It takes a pass on real reform, even though the looming bankruptcy of these programs threatens to end the guarantee of security they provide for our nation’s seniors.

And it breaks the President’s promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his term. As ABC News reported, this budget “does not come close.” We’ve heard a lot of excuses from this administration for why the President broke his promise. But what we haven’t heard is any semblance of accountability. To the best of my knowledge, no one in the White House has taken responsibility for this failure. Instead, we’ve gotten a blame game that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Jack Lew, your former boss, claimed that the reason Senate Democrats haven’t passed a budget in over 1,000 days is that the Republicans have threatened to filibuster. This is simply false. As Mr. Lew surely knows, budget resolutions cannot be filibustered. They can be passed with a simple majority.

The real source of dysfunction in the Senate comes from members of the President’s own party, who have been unwilling – for almost three years now – to go on record in support of his budgets, or to pass budgets of their own. More to the point, it wasn’t so long ago that the President’s party held total control of the White House and both branches of Congress – during which time his agenda was enacted in near totality:

* massive new spending and taxes
* the creation of new, open-ended entitlements
* a regulatory onslaught that hurt the economy
* and trillions of dollars in new debt.

Even after all this, the new House Majority provided him with an opportunity to make good on his promise – to put aside the “chronic avoidance of tough decisions” that he once lamented. We were – and we remain – eager to work with the President to stop spending money we don’t have… to reform government programs that aren’t delivering on their promises… and to enact pro-growth policies that raise revenue by getting our economy moving again.

Yet, instead of working with us, the President has demonized our ideas to save and strengthen health and retirement security programs. He fought to keep his reckless spending spree going. And he continues to insist on taking more money from hardworking Americans – not to reduce the debt, but to fuel his ever-higher spending.

The President’s ongoing refusal to advance serious solutions to our nation’s fiscal challenges represents a stunning dereliction of duty. But I haven’t given up hope. I remain committed to working with my colleagues of both parties wherever common ground can be reached. There is a growing bipartisan consensus for the reforms that are needed. But this consensus cannot succeed as long as the President of the United States remains on the outside looking in.

Unfortunately, that’s where he stands today. And my hope is that this hearing can shed some light on why. Mr. Zients, we look forward to your testimony, but we do not envy your predicament. This unserious budget raises some very serious questions, and the American people deserve answers.

Unfortunately, while Paul Ryan can pontificate with complete accuracy that this budget is a disaster in as much as what it is supposed to be - a serious, governing document, that is not what Obama meant it to be. It should have been stamped Obama Reelection Campaign, 2013. God help us.

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The Conscience Of An Excommunicated Heretical Leftie

2012-02-15T01:58:00.000-05:00

There are two things the modern left cannot tolerate. In second place is dissent from their opponents. The modern left - i.e., the outgrowth of the 60's radical left - wholly jettisoned intellectual honesty and a desire for free and fair debate long, long ago. Any fact that does not support their side is ignored and every effort made to delegitimize the person speaking (Media Matters and the White House war on Fox is a classic example.) The modern left's playbook calls for shutting down debate as soon as possible.

The only thing the modern left hates more than dissent from their opponents is a heretic - one of their own who crosses the Democrat's plantation boundary and thinks for themselves. Yet that is what happened to independent film maker Eric Allen Bell, a man sufficiently far left that he was, at one time, a prolific diarist on Kos. Yet over the past year, while doing research on opposition to a new Mosque in Tennessee for what he intended to be his latest documentary - (more specifically, it was intended to be about racist Christian Islamaphobic yahoos). But Bell had an epiphany. He discovered that the vast majority of modern structural Islam - the mosques, the front organizations, the polemicists - they do not share his values. Indeed, it would be fair to say that he found that their values were wholly antithetical to his own.

As Bell began to sound the alarm in the left wing blogosphere, he ignited a firestorm of debate there.

Heh. Just joking.

His facts were ignored, he was labeled an Islamaphobe and quickly excommunicated from the left. You will find his fascinating story told in detail here. I'd like to highlight one point that he makes:

[O]ne thing Horowitz did say that came through with stunning clarity was an assertion that there was an unholy alliance between the Left and Islam, with radical Islam using the Liberal media to create a smoke screen for it – a place where radical can appear moderate and receive Liberal support. He also went on to say that in many universities across America that students were being radicalized, indoctrinated into the far Left. And I remembered something. Nearly all of the organizers for the college aged activist group who demonstrated in favor of the new mosque in Murfreesboro were either Socialists or Communists. These were kids and they all seemed to share one Professor in particular who was something of a mentor to them, a Socialist who always seemed to be hanging around their college parties, infiltrating into their social scene, taking the smarter and more articulate ones under his wing as their campus group called simply “Solidarity” grew in numbers – in fact recruiting quite a few students while organizing in favor of the mosque. Yikes.

There is a reason the socialist left is willing to make this tactical alliance with the Islamicists. The Muzzies help in pursuing what has been a, if not the, central goal of the socialists since their very inception, the destruction of Christianity and Judaism as the basis for our nation. And in that, Islam is the perfect momentary ally. The radical Muzzies make no secret of the fact that they seek to conquer Israel and to drive out Judaism and Christianity from all areas under their control. The left's faustian bargain with the radical Muzzies really is like the Hitler-Stalin pact, as the only thing the radical Muzzies hate more than the Jews or Christians are the godless - at least once the Muzzies have lost their use for them.

Look For The Union Label

2012-02-14T23:53:00.000-05:00

(H/T Bubba Knows)

In 2009, Obama did away with the DC voucher program that allowed poor children in DC to received the same education as his, Obama's, children. Obama did so because the public sector unions, and in particular, teachers' unions, complained. And indeed, it is those public sector unions that form the economic foundation of today's Democrat Party. And yet, a substantial portion of the Democratic base consider the state of education in inner cities to be the biggest civil rights issue still extant. This issue should be second only to Obamacare for Republicans. Speaker Boehner, to his credit, is keeping the issue alive. Everyone else on the right seems to be yawning.

From The Dept. of Dirty Tricks

2012-02-14T18:05:00.000-05:00

Last night's debate was another mini-travesty with the moderators asking utterly inane questions seemingly right out of the Democratic playbook. The worst of the bunch was whether states have a right to ban contraception. As Romney pointed out ten times to Stephanopoulos, that is not an issue any state has raised. . . . The only reason to dwell on it in a Republican debate was to prime the left wing pump for the general election.

Wolf Howling, Another Poor Debate Compliments Of ABC, 8 Jan. 2012

Could it possibly be any clearer today that ABC's Stephanopoulos was read in by the White House on Obama's plans to have the HHS mandate that religious employers fund health plans that fund "free" contraception, sterilization and abortion Plan-B pills for all women?

Coming as all this does on revelations of the close relationship between the truly despicable Media Matters and the White House, as well as the joint White House / Media Matters efforts to delegitimize Fox News, one gets the impression of a White House in bed with the media to superstitiously manipulate public opinion and silence all dissent. If all of this isn't underhanded, I don't know what is.

This from Dick Morris:

(H/T Legal Insurrection)

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The Daily Caller: Media Matters Led The Campaign To Delegitimize Fox News

2012-02-14T03:27:00.000-05:00

Wow, the Daily Caller expose on Media Matters is great. Today, the DC released Part 2 of their expose, this one dealing with Media Matters astroturf campaign to delegitimize the Fox News Channel - a meme picked up by every leftie from the White House on down in 2009, and indeed, which still dominates the goals of Media Matters. And to say that their methods lacked any shred of intellectual honesty is an understatement. What utter scumbags. How are they keeping their non-profit status? This from the Daily Caller:

A little after 1 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2009, Karl Frisch emailed a memo to his bosses, Media Matters for America founder David Brock and president Eric Burns. In the first few lines, Frisch explained why Media Matters should launch a “Fox Fund” whose mission would be to attack the Fox News Channel.

“Simply put,” Frisch wrote, “the progressive movement is in need of an enemy. . . . Filling the lack of leadership on the right, Fox News has emerged as the central enemy and antagonist of the Obama administration, our Congressional majorities and the progressive movement as a whole.”

“We must take Fox News head-on in a well funded, presidential-style campaign to discredit and embarrass the network, making it illegitimate in the eyes of news consumers.”

What Frisch proceeded to suggest, however, went well beyond what legitimate presidential campaigns attempt. “We should hire private investigators to look into the personal lives of Fox News anchors, hosts, reporters, prominent contributors, senior network and corporate staff,” he wrote.

After that, Frisch argued, should come the legal assault: “We should look into contracting with a major law firm to study any available legal actions that can be taken against Fox News, from a class action law suit to defamation claims for those wronged by the network. I imagine this would be difficult but the right law firm is bound to find some legal ground for us to take action against the network.”

Frisch went on to call for “an elaborate shareholder campaign” against News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News: “This can take many forms, from a front group of shareholders, to passing resolutions at shareholder meetings or massive demonstrations are [sic] shareholder meetings.”

. . . Yet Frisch continued: “We should also hire a team of trackers to stake out private and public events with Fox News anchors, hosts, reporters, prominent contributors and senior network/corporate staff.” . . .

The memo goes on to suggest new and unusual ways to harass Fox News: “detailed opposition research” on the network’s staff and executives, attacks against Fox News employees on Facebook and other social media, mailing anti-Fox News literature to their homes and placing “yard signs and outdoor advertising in their neighborhoods.”

At one point, Frisch suggests putting “a mole inside of” the network. . . .

How many of these tactics did Media Matters actually engage in? Sources inside the organization either don’t know or won’t say,. . .

“We should work hard to enlist LGBT, Hispanic, African American, Women, Religious Leaders and Groups against Fox News.”

In another section, Frisch suggests convincing liberal film documentarian Michael Moore to make “a major documentary about Fox News and Fox News personalities.”

Finally, the memo suggests that drones in the Media Matters research department ought to ghost-write an extended hit on the network: “[W]e should write a book under David’s name that savages Fox News and Fox News employees. The market for this is likely huge.”

Is it? We’ll see next week, when that book is released.

Academics & The Church Respond To Obama's "Accommodation" On The HHS Mandate

2012-02-13T20:41:00.000-05:00

On Friday, the President made a smoke and mirrors "accommodation" to the Catholics providing that some institutions associated with the Catholic Church would not have to fund contraception, sterilization and plan-B abortion pills to their employees as part of their health care plan, but the institution's insurer would atill have to cover the cost of paying for it free of charge to all female employees. In other words, Obama proposed a pure accounting gimmick. He did so without consultation with the Catholic Church's - or any denomination's - religious leaders. Some on the left - generally, people too lost in the fog to see that religion and socialism of the left exist in irreconcilable conflict or people who seem only to bear the mantle of religion in order to advance other of their interests - have seized on to this as a reasonable accommodation. To their credit, the Bishops and the rank and file clergy of the Catholic Church remain up in arms.

And in another development, a large group of very high profile academics from numerous different disciplines, religions and universities - including 25 members of Notre Dame's facutly - have drafted a letter to President Obama excoriating him for the HHS mandate and his utterly cynical "accommodation." Symbolically, the letter is drafted on University of Notre Dame letterhead. You will recall that it was at a Notre Dame commencement speech that Obama made his pitch to Catholics that he would respect the conscience of the religious. The contents of the letter are below, with a list of all of the signatories:

February 10, 2012

Unacceptable

The Obama administration has offered what it has styled as an “accommodation” for religious institutions in the dispute over the HHS mandate for coverage (without cost sharing) of abortion inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception. The administration will now require that all insurance plans cover (“cost free”) these same products and services. Once a religiously affiliated (or believing individual) employer purchases insurance (as it must, by law), the insurance company will then contact the insured employees to advise them that the terms of the policy include coverage for these objectionable things.

This so-called “accommodation” changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the assault on religious liberty and the rights of conscience which gave rise to the controversy. It is certainly no compromise. The reason for the original bipartisan uproar was the administration’s insistence that religious employers, be they institutions or individuals, provide insurance that covered services they regard as gravely immoral and unjust. Under the new rule, the government still coerces religious institutions and individuals to purchase insurance policies that include the very same services.

It is no answer to respond that the religious employers are not “paying” for this aspect of the insurance coverage. For one thing, it is unrealistic to suggest that insurance companies will not pass the costs of these additional services on to the purchasers. More importantly, abortion drugs, sterilizations, and contraceptives are a necessary feature of the policy purchased by the religious institution or believing individual. They will only be made available to those who are insured under such policy, by virtue of the terms of the policy.

It is morally obtuse for the administration to suggest (as it does) that this is a meaningful accommodation of religious liberty because the insurance company will be the one to inform the employee that she is entitled to the embryo-destroying “five day after pill” pursuant to the insurance contract purchased by the religious employer. It does not matter who explains the terms of the policy purchased by the religiously affiliated or observant employer. What matters is what services the policy covers.

The simple fact is that the Obama administration is compelling religious people and institutions who are employers to purchase a health insurance contract that provides abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization. This is a grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand.

It is an insult to the intelligence of Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other people of faith and conscience to imagine that they will accept an assault on their religious liberty if only it is covered up by a cheap accounting trick. Finally, it bears noting that by sustaining the original narrow exemptions for churches, auxiliaries, and religious orders, the administration has effectively admitted that the new policy (like the old one) amounts to a grave infringement on religious liberty. The administration still fails to understand that institutions that employ and serve others of different or no faith are still engaged in a religious mission and, as such, enjoy the protections of the First Amendment.

Signed:

John Garvey
President, The Catholic University of America

Mary Ann Glendon
Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University

Robert P. George
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University

O. Carter Snead
Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame

Yuval Levin
Hertog Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center
_______________________________________________

University and College Professors

Jean Bethke Elshtain
Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics in the Divinity School,
Department of Political Science and the Committee on International Relations,
The University of Chicago

Michael W. McConnell
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law & Director, Stanford Constitutional Law Center,
Stanford University

Donald Landry, Samuel Bard Professor of Medicine & Chair, Department of Medicine & Physician-in-Chief, Columbia University

Thomas F. Farr
Director of the Religious Freedom Project, Georgetown University

Richard W. Garnett
Associate Dean and Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame

John B. Londregan
Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, Princeton University

Patrick MacKinley Brennan
John F. Scarpa Chair in Catholic Legal Studies and Professor of Law, Villanova University

Mark C. Murphy
McDevitt Professor of Religious Philosophy, Georgetown University

Patrick Griffin
Department Chair and Madden-Hennebry Professor of History, University of Notre Dame

John Cavadini
Director, Institute for Church Life and Associate Professor of Theology,

University of Notre Dame
Gary Anderson

Hesburgh Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame
Christian Smith

William R. Kenan Professor of Sociology & Director, Center for the Study of Religion and
Society, University of Notre Dame

Harindra Joseph F. Fernando
Wayne and Diana Murdy Endowed Professor of Engineering and Geosciences,
University of Notre Dame

William N. Evans
Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

Steven Smith
Class of 1975 Endowed Professor of Law, University of San Diego

Larry Alexander
Warren Distinguished Professor of Law, University of San Diego

W. Cole Durham, Jr.
Susa Young Gates University Professor of Law and

Director, International Center for Law and Religion Studies
J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University

Lynn D. Wardle
Bruce C. Hafen Professor of Law, Brigham Young University Law School

Prof. Alan Mittleman
Professor of Modern Jewish Thought
The Jewish Theological Seminary

Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik
Director, Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought, Yeshiva University

Gilbert Meilaender
Duesenberg Professor in Christian Ethics, Valparaiso University

Russell D. Moore, Ph.D.
Dean and Professor of Christian Theology and Ethics,
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Thomas Kelly
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University

Michael Stokes Paulsen
Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law, The University of St. Thomas

David Lyle Jeffrey
Distinguished Professor of Literature and the Humanities, Baylor University

Edward R. Dougherty
Robert M. Kennedy '26 Chair
Director, Genomic Signal Processing Laboratory
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University
Director, Computational Biology Division
Translational Genomics Research Institute, Phoenix, AZ

Paolo Carozza
Professor of Law and Director, Center for Civil and Human Rights, University of Notre Dame

Philip Bess
Director of Graduate Studies and Professor of Architecture, University of Notre Dame

Timothy S. Fuerst
Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

Gerard V. Bradley
Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame

Amy Barrett
Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame

Sean Kelsey
Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame

Gabriel Said Reynolds
Tisch Family Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology and Director of
Undergraduate Studies, University of Notre Dame

David O’Connor
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Concurrent Associate Professor of Classics,
University of Notre Dame

Joseph Kaboski
David F. and Erin M. Seng Associate Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

Patrick Deneen
Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Associate Professor
Director, The Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy
Department of Government, Georgetown University

Vincent Phillip Muñoz
Tocqueville Associate Professor of Political Science
Concurrent Associate Professor of Law
Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame

John O’Callaghan
Director, Jacques Maritain Center & Associate Professor of Philosophy,
University of Notre Dame

Daniel Philpott
Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame

Eric Sims
Associate Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

Mike Pries
Associate Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

John F. Gaski
Associate Professor of Marketing, University of Notre Dame

Duncan G. Stroik
Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Notre Dame

Rev. Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C.
Professor of History, University of Notre Dame

Bryan T. McGraw
Assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations, Wheaton College

Timothy Samuel Shah
Associate Director & Scholar in Residence, Religious Freedom Project,

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, and
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Government, Georgetown University

Jacqueline M. Nolan-Haley
Professor of Law and Director, ADR & Conflict Resolution Program, Fordham University

Rev. Thomas V. Berg
Professor of Moral Theology, St. Joseph’s Seminary-Dunwoodie

William S. Brewbaker III
Associate Dean and William Alfred Rose Professor of Law, University of Alabama

William B. Hurlbut, M.D.
Physician and Consulting Professor, Neuroscience Institute, Stanford University

Micah J. Watson
Director, Center for Politics and Religion and Assistant Professor of Political Science,
Union University

Helen Alvaré
Associate Professor of Law, George Mason University

Michael Moreland,
Associate Professor of Law, Villanova University

V. Bradley Lewis
Associate Professor of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America

Mark Rienzi
Senior Counsel, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Assistant Professor of Law, the Catholic University of America

Patrick Lee
Professor of Philosophy, Franciscan University of Steubenville

Francis J. Beckwith
Professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies, Baylor University

William Imboden
Assistant Professor, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas

Christopher Tollefsen
Professor of Philosophy, University of South Carolina

Thomas A. Cavanaugh
Professor of Philosophy, University of San Francisco

C. Ben Mitchell, PhD
Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy, Union University

Gerald R. McDermott
Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion, Roanoke College

Robert D. Benne
Director of the Center for Religion and Society, Roanoke College

Douglas Henry
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Baylor University

Richard Stith
Professor of Law, Valparaiso University

Thomas S. Kidd
Associate Professor of History and Senior Fellow, Institute of Religion, Baylor University

Joseph Knippenberg
Professor of Politics, Oglethorpe University

John D. Woodbridge
Research Professor of Church History and Christian Thought,
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Rev Prof D. A. Carson
Research Professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
President, The Gospel Coalition
University/College/Seminary Presidents, Deans, and Board Members

Stephen D. Minnis
President, Benedictine College

Robert Bryan Sloan Jr
President, Houston Baptist University

Sister Mary Sarah Galbraith, O.P.
President, Aquinas College (TN)

R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
President, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Daniel Akin
President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Timothy O’Donnell
President, Christendom College

David Dockery
President, Union University

Dr. William K. Thierfelder
President, Belmont Abbey College

Carl E. Zylstra
President, Dordt College

Michael F. McLean

President, Thomas Aquinas College (CA)

Samuel W. "Dub" Oliver, Ph.D.
President, East Texas Baptist University

H. James Towey
President, Ave Maria University

Bernard F. O’Connor
President, DeSales Unviersity

Father Terence Henry, TOR
President, Franciscan University of Steubenville

William Edmund Fahey
President, The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts (NH)

Marianne Evans Mount
President, Catholic Distance University

Brian Kelly
Dean, Thomas Aquinas College (CA)

Thomas Hibbs
Honors College Dean and Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Culture, Baylor University

Donna Bethell
Chairman of the Board, Christendom College

Journalists

R.R. Reno
Editor, First Things

Ryan Anderson
Editor, Public Discourse

Kathryn Jean Lopez
Editor at Large, National Review Online

Ramesh Ponnuru
Senior Editor, National Review

Matt Schmitz
Deputy Editor, First Things

Justin Taylor
Blogger, "Between Two Worlds," The Gospel Coalition

Independent Scholars and Activists

Nancy Matthews
Former Chancellor of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport

George Weigel
Distinguished Senior Fellow and William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies,
Ethics and Public Policy Center

Chuck Colson
Founder, Prison Fellowship Ministries

Edward Whelan
President, Ethics and Public Policy Center

Michael Novak
George Frederick Jewett Scholar Emeritus in Religion, Philosophy and Public Policy,
American Enterprise Institute
Board member, Ave Maria University

Michael Cromartie
Evangelicals and Civic Life Program
Ethics and Public Policy Center

Brian W. Walsh,
Executive Director, American Religious Freedom Program
Ethics and Public Policy Center

Patrick Fagan
Senior Fellow and Director, Marriage & Religion Research Institute

Austin Ruse
President, C-FAM

Father Jonathan Morris
Author, Televison Analyst
Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, NYC

Maggie Gallagher
Institute for Marriage and Public Policy

Robert C. Odle, Jr.
Partner, Weil Gotshal and Manges

William Saunders
Senior Vice President and Senior Counsel
Americans United for Life

Charmaine Yoest
President, Americans United for Life

Nikolas T. Nikas
President and General Counsel
Bioethics Defense Fund

Dorinda C. Bordlee
VP, Chief Counsel
Bioethics Defense Fund

Elizabeth Kirk
University of Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life

Matthew J. Franck
Director, William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution,
The Witherspoon Institute

Kristina Arriaga
Executive Director, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty

Battles That Changed History – Chipyong-ni: Feb. 13-15, 1951

2012-02-13T05:59:00.001-05:00

Reposted from Feb. 13, 2011:

The above photo was taken on about Feb. 5, 1951 showing some of the soldiers of the 23rd Infantry Regiment taking a break on a hill in Korea. Eight days after this picture was taken, they would face the fight of their lives in the Battle of Chipyong-ni. It would prove the turning point in the Korean War and it has gone into the history books as one of the greatest defensive actions of modern warfare.

The 23rd Infantry Regiment, less than 4,500 men strong, was surrounded at Chipyong-ni by an attacking force of four divisions totalling 25,000 Chinese soldiers. The Chinese started their attack on the night of 13 Feb. By the time the smoke cleared on the 15th, over 5,000 Chinese dead and wounded littered the battlefield, the Chinese march south from the Yalu was ground to a halt, and the UN forces were able to permanently regain the offensive, driving the Chinese north of the 38th parallel and stopping there only on the order of President Truman.

Read More

Media Matters, The White House & The MSM

2012-02-13T03:32:00.000-05:00

The Daily Caller is running an expose on Media Matters. The lowlights from the first installment -

1. Media Matters coordinates weekly with the White House.

2. Media Matters is being run by David Brock, a paranoid manic depressive who supplements his meds with cocaine.

3. The Soros-funded Media Matters plans to spend $20 million influencing news coverage in 2012.

4. Media Matters targets reporters who do not report their spin, orchestrating massive negative e-mail campaigns to the reporter.

5. Media Matters targets company's that advertise on conservative programs. They have successfully gotten Imus and Lou Dobbs fired and may well have played a roll in Glen Beck's departure from Fox.

6. Media Matters has more than a few partners in the media:

“The entire progressive blogosphere picked up our stuff,” says a Media Matters source, “from Daily Kos to Salon. Greg Sargent [of the Washington Post] will write anything you give him. He was the go-to guy to leak stuff.”

“If you can’t get it anywhere else, Greg Sargent’s always game,” agreed another source with firsthand knowledge. . .

“The HuffPo guys were good, Sam Stein and Nico [Pitney],” remembered one former staffer. “The people at Huffington Post were always eager to cooperate, which is no surprise given David’s long history with Arianna [Huffington].”

“Jim Rainey at the LA Times took a lot of our stuff,” the staffer continued. “So did Joe Garofoli at the San Francisco Chronicle. We’ve pushed stories to Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne [at the Washington Post]. Brian Stelter at the New York Times was helpful.”

“Ben Smith [formerly of Politico, now at BuzzFeed.com] will take stories and write what you want him to write,” explained the former employee, whose account was confirmed by other sources. Staffers at Media Matters “knew they could dump stuff to Ben Smith, they knew they could dump it at Plum Line [Greg Sargent’s Washington Post blog], so that’s where they sent it.”

Smith, who refused to comment on the substance of these claims, later took to Twitter to say that he has been critical of Media Matters.

Why am I not surprised by any of this, including the fact that the White House and Media Matters are in bed together. Expect that to be studiously ignored by the news media. Regardless, if this is only Part I of the DC's expose, the follow-on stuff ought to be pretty juicy.

A Historical Perspective On Religion & Obama's HHS Mandate

2012-02-12T14:34:00.000-05:00

This is the third part of a three part essay. Part 1 examined the original intent of the Founders in passing the Free Exercise clause. Part 2 looked at the current state of the law surrounding that clause.

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The first thing to understand about the Department of Health and Human Services’ birth-control mandate, and the last, is that it is an assault on both faithful Christians and the Constitution by leftists who consider themselves at “war” — their word — with bourgeois America. It has nothing to do with guaranteeing access to contraceptives, sterilization, and abortifacients.
Andrew McCarthy, The Contraceptive Mandate’s Shaky Justification, NRO, 11 Feb. 2012

Virtually all laws, at least beyond those that are purely administrative or relating to health and safety, are moral choices of one sort or another. They set the outer bounds of what is morally acceptable or required in our society. So it is no surprise that when Obama speaks of his latest mandate to require all health care plans to provide free contraception, sterilization and plan-B abortion for women, he does so in the language of morality – to fail to force this mandate on religious employers will, he says, “discriminate against women.”

For most of the past two millenium, the moral source of our laws in Western civilization has been the Judeo-Christian ethic. It has provided a stable and immutable framework for morality at the heart of Western civilization - one that places the greatest importance on the sanctity of individual human life. And, as many have noted, it likewise provided the basis for our nation:

Nineteenth century historians wrote extensively on the United States of America having a distinctively Protestant character in its outlook and founding political philosophy. . . .

The notion of a distinctive religious basis for American democracy and culture was first described and popularized by Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1840s, in his influential book, Democracy in America. In the second chapter, de Tocqueville describes America's unique religious heritage from the Puritans. His analysis showed the Puritans as providing the foundational values of America, based on their strong Hebrew Bible view of the world, which included fighting for earthly political justice, an emphasis on laws and education, and the "chosenness" which the Puritans identified with, giving them a sense of moral mission in founding America. As de Tocqueville observed, the Puritan's biblical outlook gave America a moral dimension which the Old World lacked. De Tocqueville believed these biblical values led to America's unique institutions of religious tolerance, public education, egalitarianism, and democracy.

And to the end of protecting religion in our country, our Founders wrote into the Bill of Rights that Congress could pass no law prohibiting the “free exercise” of religion. As Thomas Jefferson wrote at the time, that meant that Congress's legislative power did not extend to “rights of conscience,” only to affirmative acts taken under the color of religion that threatened the peace. And as I have noted here, the Catholic Church teachings on artificial birth control and abortion have been doctrinal matters of conscience that far predate the signing of our Bill of Rights and, indeed, extend back into antiquity.

Ironically, almost at the same time as Jefferson and Madison were crafting our First Amendment, half a world away, Christianity's mortal enemy, socialism, was being born in the crucible of the French Revolution. One of the first acts of the Revolutionary government was to initiate a systematic and brutal war on the Catholic Church and its clergy. As recounted at the American Spectator:

The secularists of the French Revolution regarded the Roman Catholic Church as the last obstacle to atheism's final triumph. Blurting this out, the French dilettante Denis Diderot proposed to his fellow revolutionaries that they strangle the last priest with the "guts of the last king."

Socialism is a radical ideology that sprang up largely in response to the ills of the industrial revolution. The goal of socialism is to deconstruct traditional Western society and remake it under the auspices of an omnipotent government that would use its police powers to create a new order of ostensible social and economic equality. Socialists replace God with government as the source of morality. As one particularly observant commentor at Legal Insurrection recently opined:

In any left revolution, be it progressive, bolshevik, socialist, fascist, maoist, or bolivaran, it is necessary to knock down organized religion. The Catholic Church competes for the hearts and minds of people and does so effectively, as do the evangelical Protestant churches, etc. Further, the Church is organized and so can put out a message of opposition. So at some point the revolution has to take the Church on, or lose.

And yet another immutable truth of history is that, as socialist governments fully consolidate power, they invariably devalue individual human life. Much of the 20th century's history is written in the blood of over 100 million people slaughtered as part of socialist experiments.

Sixty years after the French Revolution, Karl Marx, socialism's greatest philosopher, famously wrote in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right that religion is the "opium of the people" and that "[t]he abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness." The British socialist party wrote in their 1911 manifesto that "it is a profound truth that Socialism is the natural enemy of religion." Lenin, the father of the Soviet Union's bloody experiment in Communism, wrote in 1905, “The modern class-conscious worker, reared by large-scale factory industry and enlightened by urban life, contemptuously casts aside religious prejudices, leaves heaven to the priests and bourgeois bigots, and tries to win a better life for himself here on earth.” Lenin further noted that “every socialist is, as a rule” an “atheist.” And Hitler himself was of like mind - "“National Socialism and Christianity cannot co-exist together."

And lest there be any doubt, there was Dutch socialist philosopher, Anton Pannekoek, who wrote in a 1907 essay - interesting in part for its incredibly naive belief in an incipient socialist utopia:

The socialist teachings have inoculated the laboring class with an entirely new conception of the world. The realization, that society is in a process of continual transformation, and that misery, poverty, exploitation, and all the suffering of the present are only temporary and will soon yield to an order of society, to be inaugurated by his class, in which peace, abundance, and fraternity shall reign, this realization must revolutionize the whole world conception of the laborer from the ground up. The theory of socialism furnishes the scientific foundation for this world conception. Political economy teaches us to understand the internal laws, which move the capitalist process, while historical materialism lays bare the effects of the economic revolution upon the conceptions and actions of people. And this stands irreconcilably opposed, as a materialistic doctrine, to religion.

Socialism arrived on U.S. shores in the mid 1870's. One of its early adherents was the father of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. Ms. Sanger, in a 1915 speech to the Fabian Society in London, described her father as “one of the early pioneers of Socialist thought” and noted that she herself was “rocked in the cradle of socialism.”

Sanger ultimately established Planned Parenthood to promote both contraception and abortion. As to abortion, Sanger, a nurse by training who worked among New York City's poor at the turn of the 20th century, saw many poor women suffering from “dangerous and illegal abortions.” In part motivated to help these women, and in part because she was a eugenicist who wanted to limit the birth rate of blacks, she became the leading advocate for abortion.

Sanger's motivation in pushing contraception overlapped with her motives for advocating abortion, but also went far beyond. She wanted to remove from sex any hindrance of ethical and moral limits, and, in order to promote sex among women, make sex free of the physical consequence of pregnancy.

[Sanger judged] the necessity of breaking down the "codes that have surrounded sexual behavior in the so-called Christian communities, the teachings of the churches concerning chastity and sexual purity, the prohibitions of the laws, and the hypocritical conventions of society."

As a consequence, Sanger became a direct opponent of Christianity, especially the Catholic faith, for the Church was the greatest obstacle opposing the release of the "dynamic energy" of sexuality, and such obstruction for Sanger was "nothing less than foolhardy."

"Instead of laying down hard and fast laws of sexual conduct, instead of attempting to inculcate rules and regulations," as the Church had done, "the teacher of Birth Control seeks to meet the needs of the people," she wrote.

Neither Sanger nor socialism itself was part of the original feminist movement. That movement concerned itself with seeking equality before the law for women, as well as securing their right to vote. The feminist movement didn't become radicalized until American socialists adopted feminism in the 1950's and 1960's and, along with American socialism's than recent adoption of the civil rights movement, made radical feminism part of their raison d'etre. It was then that Sanger's goals and ideas became mainstream as part of the “second,” and now “third wave” of the radicalized feminist movement.

The black civil rights movement, though co-opted and bastardized by the socialists in the 1960's, was long supported by the right - indeed, far more so than by the left. Likewise, gender equality and the right of women to be free from discrimination saw bipartisan support. So to the extent that calls for greater protections in these areas were mainstreamed, our nation was able to affirmatively act on them in the 1960's.

(Just as an aside, let me add here that the Socialist left in the U.S. has, in the past two decades, added others to their stable of victim classes that seek to drive Christianity and Judaism from their place in America - the gay rights activists and the political Islamists who dream of a world without Christians or Jews - or for that matter, gays or godless socialists.)

At any rate, the radical aspects of the socialist movement – attacks on religion, as well as pushing for unrestricted abortion and contraception, saw limited success at the ballot box through the mid-20th century. Consequently, socialists turned to the Courts to achieve what they could not through legislation.

In the mid-20th century, the American socialist left used the ACLU - an organization specifically formed to further socialism and communism - to bring a series of Court cases designed to remove religion from the public square and elevate the ethos articulated by Margaret Sanger. The socialists sought judicial activism – and by and large, the Courts complied. Though the Constitution says nothing about abortion or contraception, thus leaving the matters to the states and majority rule by default, the left asked the Court to enshrine abortion and contraception as federal Constitutional rights. Between 1965 (Griswold) and 1972 (Einstadt), the Supreme Court found a “right to privacy” in the “penumbras” of the Constitution such that access to contraception was made a Constitutional right. And then in 1973 (Roe), the Supreme Court, found the same for abortion.

As to religion, it has been under sustained attack by the socialist left through our Courts since 1947 (Everson). wherein the Supreme Court read the 1st Amendment clause prohibiting the federal government from establishing a national church to mean “a wall of separation between Church and State.” Where for almost two centuries there had been fairly substantial involvement of a generic Christianity in the public square, the Supreme Court, in a series of subsequent cases, changed that completely. In 1963 (Engle), the Court ruled prayer in school unconstitutional. In 1989 (Allegheny County), the Court ruled that a creche, prominently displayed in a Courthouse at Christmas, was unconstitutional. In 2005 (McCreary County), the Court held unconstitutional displays of the Ten Commandments in several Kentucky courthouses. But perhaps the biggest victory the left gained through the Court's was the 2002 decision in Lawrence v. Summers, a case seeking to hold Texas's laws against sodomy unconstitutional. Implicit in the holding of that case was a finding that Christian morality, standing alone, is no longer a “rational basis” to uphold our laws. The potential ramifications of that decision have not yet begun to be plumbed.

The election of Barack Obama brought to the White House the first true child of America's socialist movement. And though he nominally claims to be a Christian – he claims conversion not to the words of the bible, but to the political polemics of Rev. Jeremiah Wright – he has also publicly proclaimed that we are no longer a Christian nation. That was an aspirational statement at the time. It is difficult to believe that Obama's Christianity is anything other than a bare patina on his political ambitions.

Regardless, it is no surprise now to see Obama attempting to bring to fruition the socialist goal of weakening religion as an important force in America. With Obama in power, the socialist left has won at the ballot box and need not rely on the Courts, at least for the moment. Obama would see the Margaret Sanger's radical socialism become the moral underpinning of our laws, not merely as an alternative to Christianity as they exist now in our law, but over top of it. That is what Obama is doing with his HHS mandate to force all Christians, including Catholic institutions, to fund healthcare that will provide contraceptives, sterilizations, and plan-B abortion pills free to all women covered by the plan. And for Obama to portray this as a moral good – saying that to do anything else would be to discriminate against women – is simply obscene.

To direct this healthcare mandate at Christians is a raw power play, nothing more and nothing less. If Obama succeeds in this, then indeed, we really will have made the final push into a brave new world. The Courts have raised socialist ethos above religion as the basis of our laws, and now Obama intends to use the socialitst ethos to to significantly drive religion even further from its historic and Constitutionally protected role in our society. Obama's aspirational statement will be made good. For the first time in our history, we really will not be a Christian nation. This is a critical moment in our nation's history.

As I wrote in Part I of this three-part essay, the original intent of our Founding Fathers in passing the Free Exercise of Religion clause should protect the Church from Obama's mandate. And as I wrote in Part II of this essay, the current law surrounding the Free Exercise clause, would also likely find Obama's mandate unconstitutional, though it is far messier given the current state of the law. Let's hope that I am right.

Update: Greg, a former Catholic seminarian and now a history teacher who blogs at Rhymes With Right, believes the time is right for Pope Benedict XVI to respond to this assault on religion with a four part encyclical. Part 1 would be a statement of the proper roles of Church and State. Part 2 would be by-name excommunication of those Catholics supporting Obama's policy, starting with HHS Supervisor Kathleen Sebelius. Greg's suggested third part "ought to be a reminder to American Catholics of the importance of bringing their faith into the public square and voting booth." And lastly, "lest the encyclical be seen as a rejection of the whole idea of health care accessibility, there should be a fourth section reminding the faithful of the Church's continuing devotion to the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy, and that it is for this reason that the many schools, hospitals, and agencies subject to the Obama regulation operate." It sounds eminently reasonable to me. Do visit his site and read the entire post.

Update: Kindly linked at Bookwormroom, Larwyn's Linx and Seraphic Secret.

Update: And kindly linked at the Watcher's Council for this week's nominations.

Oiks & America's Revolting Unwashed Masses

2012-02-11T07:28:00.001-05:00

James Taranto has a great column at the WSJ on "oikiphobia" - a recently coined term describing the modern liberal elite on both sides of the pond.

An Oik repudiates national loyalties and defines his goals and ideals against the nation, promoting transnational institutions over national governments, accepting and endorsing laws that are imposed on us from on high by the EU or the UN, . . . , and defining his political vision in terms of universal values that have been purified of all reference to the particular attachments of a real historical community.

Oiks have been around for a long time. One can find their beginnings among the groups identified by Orwell in his Notes on Nationalism. That said, both Orwell and Taranto miss that the modern left also have a distinct animus towards Christianity and Judaism. But with that proviso, this from Taranto:

If you think it's offensive for a Muslim group to exploit the 9/11 atrocity, you're an anti-Muslim bigot and un-American to boot. It is a claim so bizarre, so twisted, so utterly at odds with common sense that it's hard to believe anyone would assert it except as some sort of dark joke. Yet for the past few weeks, it has been put forward, apparently in all seriousness, by those who fancy themselves America's best and brightest, from the mayor of New York all the way down to Peter Beinart.

What accounts for this madness? Charles Krauthammer notes a pattern:
Promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

-- Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

-- Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

-- Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

-- Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Now we know why the country has become "ungovernable," last year's excuse for the Democrats' failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?
Krauthammer portrays this as a cynical game: "Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. . . . What's a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument."

But this has its limits as a political strategy. Krauthammer writes that "the Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November," and no one will credit him for boldness in that prediction. Some may disagree with his reckoning as to the reason for that likely loss: that "a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them."

But can anyone argue that a show of contempt is a winning political strategy? The question answers itself and implies that the contempt is genuine.

What is the nature of this contempt? In part it is the snobbery of the cognitive elite, exemplified by a recent New York Times Web column by Timothy Egan called "Building a Nation of Know-Nothings"--or by the viciousness directed at Sarah Palin, whose folksy demeanor and state-college background seem terribly déclassé not just to liberals but to a good number of conservatives in places like New York City.

In more cerebral moments, the elitists of the left invoke a kind of Marxism Lite to explain away opinions and values that run counter to their own. Thus Barack Obama's notorious remark to the effect that economic deprivation embitters the proles, so that they cling to guns and religion. (Ironically, Obama recently said through a spokesman that he is Christian.) . . .

So if some Americans are afraid of people "who have what seem to be strange religions," it must be a totally irrational reaction to "economic insecurity." It couldn't possibly have anything to do with an act of mass murder committed in the name of the religion in question.

And Reich doesn't just fail to see the obvious. He dehumanizes his fellow Americans by treating their values, feelings and opinions as no more than reflexive reactions to material conditions. Americans in fact are a very tolerant people. Even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was no serious backlash against Muslims. What makes them angry--what makes us angry--is the bigotry of the elites.

The Ground Zero mosque is an affront to the sensibilities of ordinary Americans. "The center's association with 9/11 is intentional and its location is no geographic coincidence," as the Associated Press has reported. That Americans would find this offensive is a matter of simple common sense. The liberal elites cannot comprehend common sense, and, incredibly, they think that's a virtue. After all, common sense is so common.

The British philosopher Roger Scruton has coined a term to describe this attitude:oikophobia. Xenophobia is fear of the alien; oikophobia is fear of the familiar: "the disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours.' " What a perfect description of the pro-mosque left.

Scruton was writing in 2004, and his focus was on Britain and Europe, not America. But his warning about the danger of oikophobes--whom he amusingly dubs "oiks"--is very pertinent on this side of the Atlantic today, and it illuminates how what are sometimes dismissed as mere matters of "culture" tie in with economic and social policy . . .

The oik is, in his own eyes, a defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism. And it is the rise of the oik that has led to the growing crisis of legitimacy in the nation states of Europe. For we are seeing a massive expansion of the legislative burden on the people of Europe, and a relentless assault on the only loyalties that would enable them voluntarily to bear it. The explosive effect of this has already been felt in Holland and France. It will be felt soon everywhere, and the result may not be what the oiks expect. . . .

Yet the oiks' vision of themselves as an intellectual aristocracy violates the first American principle ever articulated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ."

This cannot be reconciled with the elitist notion that most men are economically insecure bitter clinging intolerant bigots who need to be governed by an educated elite. Marxism Lite is not only false; it is, according to the American creed, self-evidently false. That is why the liberal elite finds Americans revolting.

Obama Offers Catholics A Pure Smoke & Mirrors Accomodation

2012-02-11T05:23:00.000-05:00

On Friday morning, the Obama administration responded to the furor raised by the mandate that all Catholic related institutions will have to fund healthcare plans that cover contraception, sterilization, and plan-B abortion pills. This from the USA Today:

President Obama announced a plan today that attempts to accommodate certain religious employers opposed to a rule that would require them to provide access to birth control for women free of charge.

Obama announced that the rule would be tweaked so that in cases where non-profit religious organizations have objections, insurance companies would be required to reach out to employees and offer the coverage directly. . . .

"Under the rule, women will still have access to free preventive care that includes contraceptive service no matter where they work," Obama said. "That core principle remains. . . .

The change, loosely based on a regulation in effect in Hawaii, still leaves some unanswered questions. How will women be referred to insurers if they don't think of it themselves? Will the cost of contraceptives get added to premiums? And will other employers -- say, a strict Catholic who owns a restaurant -- be allowed the same exemption as hospitals, schools and charities? . . .

Contrary to the belief of apparently every leftie in the world, there really is no such thing as a free lunch. Just because contraception is free to women does not mean that it is free to the insurance companies. The insurers have to collect the money to pay for the free benefit from somewhere, and that somewhere is from all the people in the risk pool covered by the particular insurance policy. So in other words, what Obama is offering as a resolution of this issue is nothing more than pure smoke and mirrors - an accounting gimmick. If Catholic institutions have to purchase insurance and that insurance has to cover free contraception, steralization and Plan B abortion pills, than the Catholic Church will be funding it in reality, if not in the Obama directed accounting columns.

So why would Obama and the left possibly think that this smoke and mirrors will work to soothe the Catholic beast? Well, the left uses these kind of accounting tricks all of the time. Planned Parenthood is the premier example. Planned Parenthood receives tens of millions of our tax dollars annually with the proviso that none of those funds can be used to fund abortions. And yet, in 2009 alone, Planned Parenthood executed 332,278 abortions. How does the left get away with this? Through accounting of course. On paper, our tax dollars go to fund PP's overhead and all the other activities, while PP accounts show only other funds being used to fund the abortions. In reality, our tax funds are what allow PP to fund all of its activities, including abortion. It is intellectually dishonest to its core.Update: It would seem that our nation's Catholic Bishops share the same reservations noted above and more with Obama's latest proposal.

Krauthammer On The Gospel According To Obama

2012-02-11T04:05:00.001-05:00

Pinhead does his best Obama imitation:

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In his column this week, Charles Krauthammer disects Obama's forays into the pontifical:

At the National Prayer Breakfast last week, seeking theological underpinning for his drive to raise taxes on the rich, President Obama invoked the highest possible authority. His policy, he testified “as a Christian,” “coincides with Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.’ ”

Now, I’m no theologian, but I’m fairly certain that neither Jesus nor his rabbinic forebears, when speaking of giving, meant some obligation to the state. You tithe the priest, not the tax man.

The Judeo-Christian tradition commands personal generosity as represented, for example, by the biblical injunction against retrieving any sheaf left behind while harvesting one’s own field. That is for the gleaners — “the poor and the alien” (Leviticus 19:10). Like Ruth in the field of Boaz. As far as I can tell, that charitable transaction involved no mediation by the IRS.

. . . But this Gospel according to Obama has a rival — the newly revealed Gospel according to Sebelius, over which has erupted quite a contretemps. By some peculiar logic, it falls to the health and human services secretary to promulgate the definition of “religious” — for the purposes, for example, of exempting religious institutions from certain regulatory dictates.

Such exemptions are granted in grudging recognition that, whereas the rest of civil society may be broken to the will of the state’s regulators, our quaint Constitution grants special autonomy to religious institutions.

Accordingly, it would be a mockery of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment if, for example, the Catholic Church were required by law to freely provide such “health care services” (in secularist parlance) as contraception, sterilization and pharmacological abortion — to which Catholicism is doctrinally opposed as a grave contravention of its teachings about the sanctity of life.

Ah. But there would be no such Free Exercise violation if the institutions so mandated are deemed, by regulatory fiat, not religious.

And thus, the word came forth from Sebelius decreeing the exact criteria required (a) to meet her definition of “religious” and thus (b) to qualify for a modicum of independence from newly enacted state control of American health care, under which the aforementioned Sebelius and her phalanx of experts determine everything — from who is to be covered, to which treatments are to be guaranteed free of charge.

Criterion 1: A “religious institution” must have “the inculcation of religious values as its purpose.” But that’s not the purpose of Catholic charities; it’s to give succor to the poor. That’s not the purpose of Catholic hospitals; it’s to give succor to the sick. Therefore, they don’t qualify as “religious” — and therefore can be required, among other things, to provide free morning-after abortifacients.

Criterion 2: Any exempt institution must be one that “primarily employs” and “primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets.” Catholic soup kitchens do not demand religious IDs from either the hungry they feed or the custodians they employ. Catholic charities and hospitals — even Catholic schools — do not turn away Hindu or Jew.

Their vocation is universal, precisely the kind of universal love-thy-neighbor vocation that is the very definition of religiosity as celebrated by the Gospel of Obama. Yet according to the Gospel of Sebelius, these very same Catholic institutions are not religious at all — under the secularist assumption that religion is what happens on Sunday under some Gothic spire, while good works are “social services” properly rendered up unto Caesar.

. . . To flatter his faith-breakfast guests and justify his tax policies, Obama declares good works to be the essence of religiosity. Yet he turns around and, through Sebelius, tells the faithful who engage in good works that what they’re doing is not religion at all. You want to do religion? Get thee to a nunnery. You want shelter from the power of the state? Get out of your soup kitchen and back to your pews. Outside, Leviathan rules.

The contradiction is glaring, the hypocrisy breathtaking. But that’s not why Obama offered a hasty compromise on Friday. It’s because the firestorm of protest was becoming a threat to his reelection. Sure, health care, good works and religion are important. But reelection is divine.

21st Century Radical Secularism Meets Jefferson Meets Scalia (Part II)

2012-02-11T01:04:00.000-05:00

This is Part II of a three part post.

Part I identifies the intent of the drafters in writing the First Amendment's Free Exercise of Religion clause and explains why the Obama HHS mandate is unconstitutional in consideration thereof.

This Part II deals with how the Supreme Court, and particularly Justice Scalia, have strayed from the original intent of the Free Exercise clause, but would still find the HHS Mandate unconstitutional.

Part III will deal with how the founders did not forsee or account for the rise of radical secularism, which is a religion unto itself, and how that impacts the Free Exercise clause.

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Part II Summary

Under current federal law (the Religious Freedom Restoration Act - RFRA), the federal government would stand next to no chance of winning in a suit brought over the Obama HHS mandate as applied to Catholic institutions. But RFRA - a Congressional power grab on the issue of Constitutional interpretation - is likely itself to be found unconstitutional as applied to the federal government.

If RFRA doesn't apply, then Justice Scalia's 1990 interpretation of the Free Exercise clause, one that severely circumscribes the scope of the clause, would mean that the Obama HHS mandate is lawful. But Scalia admits in his opinion that he wrote his bright line rule to cut off litigation from minor religions that have sprung up after the signing of our Constitution. Scalia, like Jefferson before him, implicitly assumes that the government would not encroach on core, mainstream religious beliefs extant at the time of the adoption of the Bill of Rights. Thus, a case brought today under the HHS mandate would most likely result in a complete reexamination of the original intent of the drafters in passing the Free Exercise of Religion clause. And if that happens, then the Court would likely find that the HHS mandate is unconstitutional.

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Part II Discussion:

The First Amendment to the Constitution provides, in relevant part, that "Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise" of religion. As explained in Part I, the original intent of the drafters of this provision, as identified in the 1878 case of Reynolds v. United States, was to keep government from legislating in the area of then extant mainstream religious beliefs, but to allow the government to legislate against acts done under the color of religion that threaten societal order and duties.

As the scope of government has grown over the past near two and a half centuries, and as both minor religious offshoots, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, have proliferated and as people have become inventive in trying to make use of the Free Exercise clause, the Supreme Court has done a significant number of Free Exercise cases. The Free Exercise clause was used to challenge everything from payment of income taxes, payment of SSI taxes, minimum wage laws, and the draft to name but a very few. Prior to 1990, the Court had developed "Sherbert" test for Free Exercise cases that it applied on an ad hoc basis. "Under the Sherbert test, governmental actions that substantially burden a religious practice must be justified by a compelling governmental interest."

That changed in 1990, when Justice Scalia authored the opinion in Employment Division, Dept. of H.R., Oregon v. Smith, a case involving native Americans who claimed the right to use peyote as part of their religious services. The plaintiff's argued that Sherbert should be applied to their case. Scalia, whose love of originalism exists in conflict with his love of bright line rules, held that the Sherbert test would henceforth be limited to employment compensation matters. His concern was that the Sherbert test, if generally applied, would produce "a private right to ignore generally applicable laws:" He as much as admits at the conclusion of his opinion that his goal was to cut off litigation arising out of claims outside the mainstream of religious beliefs, in essence assuming, as did Jefferson two centuries previously, that the Free Exercise clause would protect mainstream religious beliefs because government would never encroach upon them:

It may fairly be said that leaving accommodation to the political process will place at a relative disadvantage those religious practices that are not widely engaged in; but that unavoidable consequence of democratic government must be preferred to a system in which each conscience is a law unto itself or in which judges weigh the social importance of all laws against the centrality of all religious beliefs.

Ultimately, Scalia adopted the brightest line of all - that a case could not succeed solely on Free Exercise grounds unless the government act at issue was directed explicitly at religion. The problem with Scalia's solution is that it went too far - and his assumption was wrong. His reshaping of the law now allows the government, as Obama has done, to encroach on what Jefferson called "the rights of conscience" of mainstream religion that the Free Exercise clause was designed to protect. It disadvantages all ancient religious practices, not merely those that "are not widely engaged in."

Congress reacted, passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb et seq. Under RFRA, laws interfering with free exercise of religion under would have to be supported by a compelling state interest and be the least restrictive of religious freedom as possible. The Supreme Court would later, in City of Boerne v. Flores, declare RFRA to be unconstitutional as applied to the states because it exceeded the bounds of Congressional authority. The decision was based on whether the Supreme Court or Congress has ultimate authority to interpret the Constitution. Yet because the Boerne Court did not address whether RFRA still stands as to federal law, it remains today as the law limiting federal government action. As NRO points out, the practical effect of the RFRA two prong test would be to make it next to impossible for the U.S. government to succeed in a case over the Obama HHS mandate.

So here's what all of this boils down to. In a case over whether the Obama HHS mandate can be lawfully applied to force Catholic institutions to fund contraception and the morning after abortion pill, the Court would have two major questions to answer. One, whether RFRA is unconstitutional as applied to the federal government. I think that likely. Which would then raise the second question, whether the bright line test in Smith applies in a situation where it is not minor religious practices that "are not widely engaged in" at issue, but the ancient, mainstream and core issue of Catholic beliefs as to contraception and sanctity of life. I cannot seeing the Court doing that, as it would mean truly gutting the Free Exercise clause.

And that last will cause some amazing linguistic contortions in the Court. For our nation, at its inception, was a Christian nation that made room for all within its ambit, subject only to restrictions that define the outer edges of what was acceptable to such a Christian nation. Indeed, that was the whole basis for the decision in the first Free Exercise case heard by the Supreme Court, Reynolds, which I addressed in Part I here. That is decidedly not politically correct to admit after six decades of radical left wing efforts to remove Christianity wholly from our laws and the public square. How the Court might modify Smith without admitting to all the rest would be interesting to see indeed.

21st Century Radical Secularism Meets Jefferson Meets Scalia (Part I)

2012-02-10T04:52:00.000-05:00

This is Part I of a three part post. This part deals with the intent of the drafters in writing the First Amendment's Free Exercise of Religion clause and why the Obama HHS mandate is unconstitutional in consideration thereof.

Part II, here, deals with how the Supreme Court, and particularly Justice Scalia, have strayed from the original intent of the Free Exercise clause, but would still find the HHS Mandate unconstitutional.

Part III will deal with how the founders did not forsee or account for the rise of radical secularism, which is a religion unto itself, and how that impacts the Free Exercise clause.

-----------------------------------------

Part I Summary

The Obama HHS mandate would force Catholic institutions to fund healthcare plans that directly violate the most sacred and core belief of the Catholic faith, sanctity of life. The mandate would force Catholic institutions to provide for contraception, sterilization, and Plan-B abortion, or in the alternative, be penalized or voluntarily dissolve. Such an act violates the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment as it was intended to be interpreted by our Founders.

The original intent of the drafters, as explained by Thomas Jefferson, was to draw a big circle around then extant mainstream religious beliefs and put those beyond the scope of government legislation. Under the Free Exercise Clause, the government could only legislate to stop an affirmative action done under the color of religion that threatened the social order. Catholic opposition to abortion and contraception was an openly held belief at the time, and thus fall within the ambit of the Free Exercise clause's protections.

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Part I Discussion:

The First Amendment to the Constitution provides, in relevant part, that "Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise" of religion. It was over a hundred years from the signing of the Constitution that the Supreme Court was first called on to interpret the Free Exercise Clause in the 1878 case of Reynolds v. United States. In that case, a Mormon criminally charged with polygamy argued that he was only acting in accord with the precepts of his religion. The Court looked back to the drafters to find how they interpreted the "Free Exercise" clause:

[In a bill] 'for establishing religious freedom,' drafted by [Thomas} Jefferson, . . . religious freedom is defined; and after a recital 'that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of [religious beliefs and principles], and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty,' it is declared 'that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order.' In these two sentences is found the true distinction between what properly belongs to the church and what to the State.

. . . Mr. Jefferson afterwards, in reply to an address to him by a committee of the Danbury Baptist Association, took occasion to say: 'Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions,-I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore man to all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.'

Coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment thus secured. Congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere [religious beliefs], but was left free to reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order.

(emphasis added, citations omitted)

The Reynolds Court found that at the time of the drafting of the Constitution, all sects of the Christian faith in Europe and America had, since ancient times, practiced monogamy and had outlawed polygamy. It wan't until the Mormon faith was created in 1830 and preached polygamy as one of its tenets that polygamy in the U.S. became an issue. The Court further found that polygamy was universally held to be criminal in the 13 states at the time that the Constitution was signed.

Thus the Court found that the Constitutional prohibition against free exercise of religion did not contemplate polygamy as within its ambit. The Court, describing polygamy as "odious" to the religious traditions protected by the Constitution, and further finding it to be an "act" that threatened the social order, the Court held that polygamy could be prohibited by the state.

Also implicit in the Court's decision was that the Free Exercise clause protected mainstream Christian and Judaism and their religious doctrines extant in the U.S. at the time the Constitution was signed. Other religious beliefs and or religious beliefs claimed thereafter, to the extent that they conflicted with "peace and good order" and "societal duties," could not claim the protections of the Free Exercise clause. To this point, the Court said:

Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. Suppose one believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship, would it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice? Or if a wife religiously believed it was her duty to burn herself upon the funeral pile of her dead husband, would it be beyond the power of the civil government to prevent her carrying her belief into practice?

So here, as a law of the organization of society under the exclusive dominion of the United States, it is provided that plural marriages shall not be allowed. Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances.

Today's Christian and Catholic Church doctrines on abortion and contraception are the same as they were at the time of the signing of the Constitution. As to contraception, "the Catholic Church has been opposed to contraception for as far back as one can historically trace." Likewise, there is no question that issues of sanctity of life and the view of abortion as a sin were part of Christianity virtually from its founding.:

There was universal condemnation of abortion in the early Church. The practice was roundly condemned in early Christian writings including the Didache and the writings of Clement of Alexandria, Ambrose, Jerome, John Chrysostom, and Augustine.

David Braine in his study concludes that:
For the whole of Christian history until appreciably after 1900 . . . there was virtually complete unanimity amongst Christians, evangelical, catholic, orthodox, that, unless, at the direct command of God, it was in all cases wrong directly to take innocent human life.

So looking at this from the standpoint of an originalist, there appears little doubt that the decision of the Obama administration to force Catholic institutions to fund contraceptives and Plan B abortion, or in the alternative to be penalized or choose to dissolve, violates the 1st Amendment's clause on the Free Exercise of Religion. The Catholic Church beliefs on contraception and abortion were core beliefs at the time of the signing of the Constitution. The Church has taken no affirmative "act," and as Jefferson points out, the limitation of the government to prohibit the free exercise of religion was meant to vindicate "the rights of conscience." It is hard to see how attacking a core value of the Church could be categorized as anything other than an attack on the conscience. Moreover, as Jefferson made clear, he saw the Free Exercise clause as being in perfect balance with the then extant religions at the time the Constitution was signed, commenting that he saw "no natural right in opposition to his social duties." Today, the natural rights remain unchanged, it is only government imposition of new "societal duties" that unconstitutionally encroach on Jefferson's - and the Catholic Church's - natural rights.

Warmies Meeting Cold Reality

2012-02-09T00:57:00.000-05:00

There is a lot of warmie news this week that I just haven't had time to blog:

- Warmies have just seen a stake put in the heart of "Glaciergate," the wholly unsupported claim out of the IPCC that the world's glaciers were melting at incredible speed and, of course, threatening a global catastrophe. A recent study based on satellite data shows that the Himilayas have lost zero ice in the past ten years.

- From Dr. Judith Curry at her blog, responding to the meme that we should all accept the absolute truth of global warming becuase there is a scientific consensus:

The climate community worked for 20 years to establish a consensus. The impact of the consensus probably peaked in 2006-2007, at the time of publication of the AR4. Courtesy of the CRU emails, we now understand the sausage making that went into creating the consensus. Manufacturing a consensus in the context of the IPCC has acted to hyper-politicize the scientific and policy debate, to the detriment of both. Its time to abandon the concept of consensus; consensus matters far less than simply being right and the arguments themselves that ought to be the focus for discussion.

- "A paper published this week in the journal Climate of the Past analyzes an "unprecedentally large network of temperature...proxy records" [a total of 120] and concludes that warming of the 20th century was "within the range of natural variability over the last 12 centuries." Only two of the eight types of temperature proxies analyzed indicate 20th century warming exceeded that of the Medieval Warming Period."

- Despite a warm 2012 January in the U.S., overall January temperatures over the last 15 years have fallen off a cliff - falling at a minus seventeen degrees per century rate.

- Real Science goes climbing behind the numbers used by NASA's Jim Hansen to show global warming: "The bottom line is that his warming trend since 1880 is primarily based on non-existent temperature readings in the Arctic. Is Hansen the worst scientist in history?"

- It wasn't that long ago that San Francisco, with all its "low flow" toilets, began stinking like a ces pool because there wasn't enough water to pipe away the human waste. One would think the greenies would have learned from this, but obviously not:

Students at a high school in Boca Raton, Florida, must step over rivers of urine and endure the stench of rancid waste after a plan to bring 'green' waterless urinals into bathrooms backfired. School officials at Spanish River High School thought they had found an environmentally-friendly, cost-saving solution for their bathrooms when they installed Falcon Waterfree urinals in their boys bathrooms. But with no water moving through the school's copper pipes to flush the urine into the sewer system, the waste produced noxious gases that ate through the metal, leaving leaky pipes that allowed urine to drip into walls and flow onto floors.

- How to create a dutiful, unthinking warmie? Get them while they are young and fill their heads full of bile. And on that note, the USA Today tells us that a "Tree-hugging Dr. Seuss character will be marketeer"

The Lorax, perhaps the most famous anti-industrial crusader from children's literature, is about to become a big-time corporate spokesman.

With a host of commercial tie-ins — albeit for eco-friendly products —Universal Pictures will begin promoting "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax" this month. The animated movie, set for release March 2 in North America, is about a creature who "speaks for the trees" and fights rampant industrialism in a retelling of the Dr. Seuss children's book first published in 1971.

The studio's nearly 70 launch partners — including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Whole Foods Market — are seeking to latch onto the Lorax's nature-friendly message. . . .

Interestingly enough, if you read the rest of the article, you will see that the "partners" are going to use Lorax to push a lot of things that one does not normally associate with kiddies. Clearly the expectation is that children, once properly conditioned, will work on their parents to also act to save the planet from the evils of industrialization. It was Lenin who famously remarked, "education, education, education." He, like our modern left, knew the value of indoctrination.

- And lastly, if you haven't seen it, read Der Spiegel's exceptional interview with Germany's newest global warming heretic, former German Environment Minister Fritx Vahrenholt.

A Multiple Choice Test

2012-02-08T23:40:00.001-05:00

In Germany, A New AGW Heretic Is Born

2012-02-08T21:47:00.000-05:00

In Germany, the warmie community is reeling from the defection of one its major players, Fritz Vahrenholt. Venderholt is a prominent Social Democrat, a former German Environment Minister, the outgoing CEO of the renewable energy group RWE Innogy, the author of a book soon to be released, "The Cold Sun," in which he writes that the "climate catastrophe is not occurring." Recently, he was questioned about his turn to AGW heresy in Der Spiegel

SPIEGEL: You are an electric utility executive by profession. What prompted you to get involved in climatology?

Vahrenholt: In my experience as an energy expert, I learned that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is more of a political than a scientific body. As a rapporteur on renewable energy, I witnessed how thin the factual basis is for predictions that are made at the IPCC. In one case, a Greenpeace activist's absurd claim that 80 percent of the world's energy supply could soon be coming from renewable sources was assumed without scrutiny. This prompted me to examine the IPCC report more carefully.

SPIEGEL: And what was your conclusion?

Vahrenholt: The long version of the IPCC report does mention natural causes of climate change, like the sun and oscillating ocean currents. But they no longer appear in the summary for politicians. They were simply edited out. To this day, many decision-makers don't know that new studies have seriously questioned the dominance of CO2. CO2 alone will never cause a warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. Only with the help of supposed amplification effects, especially water vapor, do the computers arrive at a drastic temperature increase. I say that global warming will remain below two degrees by the end of the century. This is an eminently political message, but it's also good news.

SPIEGEL: You make concrete statements on how much human activity contributes to climatic events and how much of a role natural factors play. Why don't you publish your prognoses in a professional journal?

Vahrenholt: Because I don't engage in my own climate research. Besides, I don't have a supercomputer in my basement. For the most part, my co-author, geologist Sebastian Lüning, and I merely summarize what scientists have published in professional journals -- just as the IPCC does. The book is also a platform for scientists who apply good arguments in diverging from the views of the IPCC. The established climate models have failed across the board because they cannot cogently explain the absence of warming.

SPIEGEL: You claim that the standstill has to do with the sun. What makes you so sure?

Vahrenholt: In terms of the climate, we have seen a cyclical up and down for the last 7,000 years, long before man began emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. There has been a warming phase every 1,000 years, including the Roman, the Medieval and the current warm periods. All of these warm periods consistently coincided with strong solar activity. In addition to this large fluctuation in activity, there is also a 210-year and an 87-year natural cycle of the sun. Ignoring these would be a serious mistake …

. . . In the second half of the 20th century, the sun was more active than it had been in more than 2,000 years. This "large solar maximum," as astronomers call it, has contributed at least as much to global warming as the greenhouse gas CO2. But the sun has been getting weaker since 2005, and it will continue to do so in the next few decades. Consequently, we can only expect cooling from the sun for now.

. . . Many scientists assume that the temperature changes by more than 1 degree Celsius for the 1,000-year cycle and by up to 0.7 degrees Celsius for the smaller cycles. Climatologists should be putting a far greater effort into finding ways to more accurately determine the effects of the sun on climate. For the IPCC and the politicians it influences, CO2 is practically the only factor. The importance of the sun for the climate is systematically underestimated, and the importance of CO2 is systematically overestimated. As a result, all climate predictions are based on the wrong underlying facts.

I don't claim that I know precisely whether the sun is responsible for a 40, 50 or 60 percent share of global warming. But it's nonsense for the IPCC to claim that the sun has nothing to do with it.

SPIEGEL: You claim that the standstill in global warming since 2000 has been caused in large part by a simultaneous decline in solar activity. But, in fact, the sun behaved relatively normally until the middle of the century, only becoming noticeably quieter after that. How does this fit together?

Vahrenholt: There are two effects: the declining solar activity, as well as the fluctuations in ocean currents, such as the 60-year Pacific oscillation, which was in a positive warm phase from 1977 to 2000 and, since 2000, has led to cooling as a result of its decline. Their contribution to the change in temperature has also been wrongly attributed to CO2. Most of all, however, the last sunspot cycle was weaker than the one before it. This is why the sun's magnetic field has continued to weaken since 2000. As a result, this magnetic field doesn't shield us against cosmic radiation quite as well, which in turn leads to stronger cloud formation and, therefore, cooling. What else has to happen before the IPCC at least mentions these relationships in its reports?

SPIEGEL: What you neglect to mention is that it hasn't been proven yet that cosmic radiation, which is shielded by the sun at varying degrees of effectiveness, truly leads to more cooling clouds on Earth. So far, it is only a hypothesis.

Vahrenholt: It's more than that. The Cloud Experiment, headed by physicist Jasper Kirkby, has been underway at the CERN particle research center near Geneva since 2006. The initial results of tests conducted in a chamber in which the earth's atmosphere was simulated showed that cosmic particles do indeed lead to the formation of aerosol particles for clouds.

SPIEGEL: But the aerosols demonstrated in the Cloud Experiment are much too small. They would have to grow before they could actually serve as condensation germs for clouds. Whether this happens in nature is still an open question. You present this as a fact.

Vahrenholt: You will find many correlations between cloud cover and cosmic radiation in the book. I'd like to know why the IPCC doesn't thoroughly examine this mechanism. My guess is that the answer to this question would jeopardize the entire foundation of the IPCC predictions.

The solar cycle is everything but normal. NASA scientists predict that this cycle will indeed be the weakest of the last 80 years. Not only did it start two years too late, but it's also very weak. And, besides, you can't just count sunspots. Cosmic particles continue to rain down on us because the sun's magnetic field is hardly shielding us.

Various American and British solar research groups believe that weak solar cycles are ahead. I take this seriously and expect only cooling from the sun until 2050.

SPIEGEL: Do you seriously believe that all 2,000 scientists involved in the IPCC are deluded or staying true to the official line?

Vahrenholt: It's not like that. However, I am critical of the role played by the handful of lead authors who take on the final editing of the report. They claim that they are using 18,000 publications evaluated by their peers. But 5,000 of them are so-called gray literature, which are not peer-reviewed sources. These mistakes come out in the end, just like the absurd claim that there will no longer be any glaciers in the Himalayas in 30 years. Such exaggerations don't surprise me. Of the 34 supposedly independent members who write the synthesis report for politicians, almost a third are associated with environmental organizations like Greenpeace or the WWF. Strange, isn't it?

SPIEGEL: Why are you taking on the role of the climate rebel with such passion? Where does this rage come from?

Vahrenholt: For years, I disseminated the hypotheses of the IPCC, and I feel duped. . . .

SPIEGEL: So, is it a mistake to concentrate exclusively on the reduction of carbon dioxide?

Vahrenholt: Yes. In addition to carbon dioxide, we also have black soot, for example. It creates 55 percent of the warming effect of CO2, but it could be filtered out with little effort within a few years, especially in emerging and developing countries. And, in doing so, we would achieve huge benefits for human health.. . .

SPIEGEL: Surveys show that fear of the climate catastrophe has declined. Are you preaching to the choir with your all-clear?

Vahrenholt: The fear mongers are still shaping the political debate. According to the German Advisory Council on Global Change, environmentally minded countries should forcibly bring about reduced consumption for the sake of protecting the climate. This takes us in the direction of an environmental dictatorship. And the fearmongering is also beginning to take effect. When I was in a restaurant recently, I overheard a woman at the next table telling her children that it's wrong to eat an Argentine steak -- because of the climate. That's when I ask myself: How could we have come to this point?

Does The Obamacare Mandate Further Religious Liberty?

2012-02-08T17:49:00.001-05:00

As Charles Krauthammer notes in the above video, the Obama Administration is experiencing a tremendous backlash against its decision to mandate that Catholic institutions pay for health insurance covering contraception and Plan-B abortion, or in the alternative, pay fines or dissolve. Virtually the entire Catholic Church hierarchy is up in arms, as are not just liberal Catholics, but also countless people from other religions who see this as unconstitutional government overreach. And now, the far left is itself on the attack, making the most disingenuous and intellectually dishonest arguments imaginable in support of Obama's mandate.

The ACLU came out today arguing that Catholics institutions, by refusing to fund contraception and Plan-B abortion, are trying to "impose their will on their employees." The ACLU further argues that this mandate is not a violation of religious liberty, concluding that "religious liberty" does not give Catholic institutions the right to "impose those views on others, including ignoring civil rights laws or denying critical health care."

Let's address the first of theses arguments, that Catholics are "trying to impose their will on their employees." In the Thinker's Guide To Fallacies: The Art Of Mental Trickery & Manipulation, a great publication on critical thinking, this is listed as "Dirty Trick No. 1 - Accuse Your Opponent Of Doing What He Is Accusing You Of." That is precisely what the ACLU is doing here. The Catholic Church has since its inception two millennia ago stood for the sanctity of life and, as the issues arose, they have uniformly stood in opposition to contraception and abortion. The U.S. government has just decided now to force the Catholic Church to change its position, pay a fine or face dissolution. Yet the ACLU is trying to turn the argument on its head in order to put the Catholics on the defensive. The left uses this trick all of the time. Scurrilous bastards.

As to the ACLU's "religous liberty" argument, it is equally meritless. Religious liberty lies at the foundation of our nation. Indeed, it is what drove many of the first refugees to make the dangerous trip to American shores, in order that they could freely practice their religion. And the whole concept of "religious liberty" is found in the very first Amendment to our Constituion, it provides that "Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise" of religion. Given that sanctity of life is at the very core of the Catholic Church doctrine, and given that the new Obama policy would require either that the Catholic Church act against its core doctrine, pay a penalty, or cease its existence, that by definition impinges on the free exercise of religion. Furthermore, as Ed Morrisey points out:

The rights in the Constitution are not granted to American citizens because the government decided to offer them beneficently at their discretion. They exist in the document as a testament to our natural rights, part of our innate humanness, and are detailed in the Constitution as a bar to government’s overreach in trampling them.

The ACLU is not alone in their arguments today. The trio of far left politicians, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray, and Jeanne Shaheen, have authored piece for the Wall Street Journal that is truly outrageous. They shamelessly assert that the Obamacare mandate furthers "religious liberty" based on a full scale redefinition of that term:

Those now attacking the new health-coverage requirement claim it is an assault on religious liberty, but the opposite is true. Religious freedom means that Catholic women who want to follow their church’s doctrine can do so, avoiding the use of contraception in any form. But the millions of American women who choose to use contraception should not be forced to follow religious doctrine, whether Catholic or non-Catholic.

Wow. That paragraph is nothing but non-sequiturs. First, these women are rewriting the Constitution, making it seem as if the Catholic Church itself has no rights. First Amendment protections flow not merely to individuals, but also to institutions. Indeed, if the Westboro Baptist Church has First Amendment Rights, then clearly so too does the Catholic Church.

Boxer asserts that the new mandate furthers "religious freedom." Yet to make this argument, Boxer redefines religious freedom to mean solely the right of an individual to ignore the doctrine of a religion. That is a unique and tenditious redefinition if there ever was one - which is another tried and true leftie trick of argument by fallacy.

And of course, no person in the U.S., including Catholic women, are being kept by the Catholic Church from accessing contraception or abortion as elective procedures. That has never been true and, indeed, it misstates the whole issue at hand. To claim that the Obama mandate furthers actual religious freedom is as about a shameless lie as I can imagine.

Boxer, further argues:

Catholic hospitals and charities are woven into the fabric of our broader society. They serve the public, receive government funds, and get special tax benefits. We have a long history of asking these institutions to play by the same rules as all our other public institutions.

As a threshold matter, the "rule" which Obama would impose differs fundamentally from all prior rules. None of the prior rules require Church affiliated institutions to act contrary to the core value of the Church. Further, I wait to see any case law - and I do mean any - showing that receipt of government funds and tax benefits constitutes a voluntary waiver of Constitutional rights. And lastly, Boxer ignores contrary "history" that some rules of general applicability, such as discrimination laws, cannot legally be applied in whole to religious institutions. Indeed, that was the subject of the recent Supreme Court Case, where the Court ruled unanimously for the Lutheran Church as regards the ministerial exception to employment laws.

And lastly, Boxer makes a series of pragmatic arguments that nationalizing the funding of contraception and plan-B is a panacea for American healthcare, that virtually all women use contraception at some point, and that, in the absence of funding some women working for Catholic institutions might not be able to afford the out of pocket costs. As Bookworm points out, Boxer is conflating arguments:

This is the big lie at the heart of the Obama administration's attack on traditional religious institutions. These harpies constantly conflate the availability of birth control with funding for birth control. They are not the same. Women in America can get birth control. The government can fund organizations -- indeed, it already does with the monies that go to Planned Parenthood -- that provide all these birth control options. Forcing religious organizations to pay for birth control, sterilization and abortifacients, however, both exceeds the government's power and contravenes the limitations the Bill of Rights imposes on government. This is not about whether women should have birth control; it's about with the government can force churches to pay for it.

I would add that I find Obama's decision to nationalize funding for contraception and abortion to border on the obscene. For one, this is yet another advance down the secular road, where the radical feminists want the act of sex to be wholly devoid of any moral, ethical or physical consequences. Moreover, it further the feminist left argument that abortions should be unconditionally available. This law essentially institutes radical feminist goals as the public policy of our country. Two, why should I or any other American have to fund elective costs that are rightfully at issue between consenting adults? Three, why are woman entitled to this special treatment and not men for specifically male issues? What about the dreaded EDS you hear about in ads every day for Viagra? Again the answer is because this is part of the radical secular agenda being pushed by the feminists.

So, in sum, there is good and bad in all of this. That portion of the Obamacare mandate requiring all Americans to fund the costs of birth control and abortions is likely to get through (though I wonder if individuals of deeply religious beliefs could not make the same argument as the Catholic Church, using the Courts rulings in the area conscientious objector status as a springboard for a colorable argument). The good news is that Obama has grossly overreached on this issue, as Krauthammer points out in the above video. I actually find it comforting that Obama and the far left are drawing a line in the sand on this issue. I hope they keep it up through November, because this issue is easily one that could cost Obama reelection and cost the left Congressional seats.

The Left's Constitutional Wish List

2012-02-08T04:37:00.000-05:00

Do the left wing in our country see our Constitution as an archaic obstacle to their goals? The recent evidence certainly points to it. The question then becomes, if the left could wage a magic wand, with what would they replace our Constitution?

It was about two years ago that the left's "go to guy" for policy issues, Ezra Klein, complained about the Constitution, that "the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago." The left has been working through the Courts to work fundamental changes to the Constitution for 50 years, creating new rights out of whole cloth in many instances while, in other areas of enumerated rights, limiting them. As to the latter, religion and property rights have been the arenas of the most judicial activism.

Thus it was no surprise when a sitting left wing Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, should opine that Egypt should not look to the U.S. Constitution as a model, but rather to South Africa's Constitution, as it "embrace[s] basic human rights . . . [and] an independent judiciary." Nor is it surprising to see the New York Times weigh in with an editorial, suggesting that our Constitution has many faults. "The rights guaranteed by the American Constitution are parsimonious by international standards," and the Constitution is "difficult to amend." I add as a comment here that it is not difficult to amend our Constitution if you are a federal judge who wants to see their own personal policy choices made into Constitutional law. At any rate, the NYT author then launches into the crux of the left wing criticism of our Constitution:

Americans recognize rights not widely protected, including ones to a speedy and public trial, and are outliers in prohibiting government establishment of religion. But the Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect, at least in so many words, a right to travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and health care.

It has its idiosyncrasies. Only 2 percent of the world’s constitutions protect, as the Second Amendment does, a right to bear arms."

As to a right to travel and a presumption of innocence, the NYT criticism is ridiculous. Those have been fundamental rights recognized by our Courts since the time of our founding. Likewise, the left uniformly hates the thought of an armed populace. But the real nub of the NYT criticism is that our Constitution does not make us all wards of the state by entitling us all to "food, education and welfare."

The South African Constitution so beloved of Justice Ginsburg goes further than merely "food, education and welfare." It includes:

- a right to housing;
- makes affirmative action Constitutional;
- has a provision requiring regulation of hate speech;
- provides a right of all workers to unionize and strike;
- provides a right to a clean environment;
- allows property to be expropriated not merely for a public purpose, but also "in the public interest;
- provides an extensive children's bill of rights; and finally,
- it contains a clause that allows the government to limit the above rights as it deems necessary.

In short it is a leftie's wet dream. It provides cradle to grave welfare, extensive unionization, it limits property rights, allows for government thought control under the auspices of hate speech, and finally, contains a catch all provision that allows the government to limit all of the above rights. It is a Constitution that requires big government, massive taxation to provide the welfare state, and that allows religious freedom on one hand but limits it on the other through hate speech laws and by requiring the state to assume functions that are traditionally charitable. And on top of that, the catch all provision would allow the government expansive power to drive a gaping hole through every one of the rights.

If you want to see where the left would lead our nation, Ginsburg and the NYT are not exactly hiding the ball. They would take us from a nation of limited government to a socialist nation with an expansive government. Unfortunately, through judicial activisim, they are well on the way to achieving their goal. It is a process that, as Newt Gingrich and Andrew McCarthy point out, must end.

Another Anti-Democratic Court Outrage - The Ninth Circuit Upholds A Constitutional "Right" To Gay Marriage

2012-02-07T19:49:00.000-05:00

Everything that is wrong with our of control court system is on display today in the Ninth Circuit Court's decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, upholding a lower court ruling that the will of over 7 million Californians who voted for Prop. 8 doesn't matter. Morality based on ancient Christian moral precepts doesn't matter. Gay marriage is a "constitutional right" in California.

You can find the entire opinion at Legal Insurrection.

There is no question that at the time of the drafting of the Constitution and, 70 years later, the 14th Amendment, homosexuality was a legally proscribed practice across our nation. Thus, using the originalist theory of Constitutional interpretation, gay marriage cannot today be recast as a Constitutional right absent an Amendment to the Constitution. And indeed, this finding of gay marriage as a Constitutional right by the 9th Circuit is pure judicial activism, creating new rights out of whole cloth. This is in almost every respect a replay of Roe v. Wade.

Gay marriage is a social issue raised to the fore today on the basis of changing social mores. Since it was not a right envisioned by the drafters of our Constitution and 14th Amendment, gay marriage is an issue that should be solely reserved to the states - and very much more specifically, the states' ballot boxes. This is not an issue for the Courts.

What we see in the Ninth Circuit opinion is just one more group of unelected judges who deem themselves the final arbiters of what U.S. social policy should be and who have no problem with unilaterally amending our Constitution. This despite the fact that the Constitution provides two different methods for amendment, neither of which provides for the unilateral decision of a gay district court judge or two left wing judges on the 9th Circuit Court to depart from the original intent of the drafters.

This is also one more attack on religion in this country - with the left seeking to delegitimize it and raise in its stead their own "anything goes - as long is it doesn't disagree with what we want" morality and mentality. We have seen that morality at work in just the past weeks, with the Obama administration decision to force Catholic institutions to pay for health insurance covering contraception and Plan-B abortion, and we have seen that mentality at work in the left's utterly vociferous reaction to the Komen charity's decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood.

Professor Jacobsen at Legal Insurrection summarizes the Perry court holding thusly: "since there was a prior right to samesex marriage (based on a California Supreme Court decision which gave rise to Prop. 8 ) — the taking away of that right without justification violated the 14th Amendment." So yes, the Ninth Circuit danced around affirmatively finding a right of gay marriage in the Equal Protection clause. That still does not change the fact that they should have dispensed with this case on the ground that the Equal Protection clause allows for no such right and that the will of Californians who voted for Prop 8 should be honored.

So why wasn't ancient morality derived from the Christian religion a sufficient "justification" to uphold Prop. 8. That is because, as a matter of law, Christian moral views are now deemed "irrational" and not afforded any weight. That is a complete, judicialy imposed break with how our founding fathers saw the role of religion in America. Compare and contrast this with the Northwest Ordinance, passed by the same people who voted to approve the First Amendment, that "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged;” [and compare as well as with] early Congresses [that] proceeded to make grants of land to serve religious purposes and to fund sectarian education . . ."

At any rate, the Supreme Court led the way in severing Christian morality from our laws when they held in Lawrence v. Texas that morality is no longer a justifiable basis for our laws. If you read that case, you will see that the majority simply disagreed with the Christian morality enshrined in the Texas state law proscribing sodomy. Ironically, what they did instead was to substitute their own moral choices. It was another major marker in the advance of secularism in this country over the will of the people and another major attack on the role of Christianity in the public square.

And thus today do we have the 9th Circuit Court in Perry v. Schwarzenegger ruling that there is no rational basis for denying gays the right to marry in California. Newt Gingrich and Andrew McCarthy have this one right. Our courts are completely out of control. Something must be done to restore the constitutional balance - and preferably, that something will include tar and feathers.

Thomas Sowell On Romney, Conservativism, & The Minimum Wage Law

2012-02-07T11:32:00.002-05:00

My own view of Mitt Romney is that he is a person who has mastered the vocabulary of conservativism in as much as a native speaker of English might master, say Mandarin Chinese. Romney speaks the language of conservativism with perfect diction, but it is obvious that he is not a conservative by nature. I pointed that out in response to his statement that he is not concerned with the poor. Today, Thomas Sowell makes the same point in his latest IBD column, finding Romney's statement that he would index the minimum wage law to inflation to be "defining." This from Dr. Sowell:

. . . Romney's statement about not worrying about the poor — because they "have a very ample safety net" — was followed by a statement that was not just a slip of the tongue, and should be a defining moment in telling us about this man's qualifications as a conservative and, more important, as a potential president of the United States.

Romney has come out in support of indexing the minimum wage law, to have it rise automatically to keep pace with inflation. . . .

. . . [T]o people who call themselves conservatives, and aspire to public office, there is no excuse for not being aware of what a major social disaster the minimum wage law has been for the young, the poor and especially for young and poor blacks.

It is not written in the stars that young black males must have astronomical rates of unemployment. It is written implicitly in the minimum wage laws.

We have gotten so used to seeing unemployment rates of 30% or 40% for black teenage males that it might come as a shock to many people to learn that the unemployment rate for 16- and 17-year-old black males was just under 10% back in 1948. Moreover, it was slightly lower than the unemployment rate for white males of the same age.

How could this be?

The economic reason is quite plain. The inflation of the 1940s had pushed money wages for even unskilled, entry-level labor above the level specified in the minimum wage law passed 10 years earlier. In other words, there was in practical effect no national minimum wage law in the late 1940s.

My first full-time job, as a black teenage high-school dropout in 1946, was as a lowly messenger delivering telegrams. But my starting pay was more than 50% above the level specified in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

Liberals were of course appalled that the federal minimum wage law had lagged so far behind inflation — and, in 1950, they began a series of escalations of the minimum wage level over the years.

It was in the wake of these escalations that black teenage unemployment rose to levels that were three or four times the level in 1948. Even in the most prosperous years of later times, the unemployment rate for black teenage males was some multiple of what it was even in the recession year of 1949. And now it was often double the unemployment rate for white males of the same ages.

This was not the first or the last time that liberals did something that made them feel good about themselves, while leaving havoc in their wake, especially among the poor whom they were supposedly helping.

For those for whom "racism" is the explanation of all racial differences, let me assure them, from personal experience, that there was not less racism in the 1940s.

For those who want to check out the statistics — and I hope that would include Mitt Romney — they can be found detailed on pages 42 to 45 of "Race and Economics" by Walter Williams.

Nor are such consequences of minimum wage laws peculiar to blacks or to the United States. In Western European countries whose social policies liberals consider more "advanced" than our own, including more generous minimum wage laws and other employer-mandated benefits, it has been common in even prosperous years for unemployment rates among young people to be 20% or higher.

The economic reason is not complicated. When you set minimum wage levels higher than many inexperienced young people are worth, they don't get hired. It is not rocket science.

Milton Friedman explained all this, half a century ago, in his popular little book for non-economists, "Capitalism and Freedom." So have many other people. If a presidential candidate who calls himself "conservative" has still not heard of these facts, that simply shows that you can call yourself anything you want to.

If The Economy Is Getting Better, Than Why . . .

2012-02-05T01:53:00.000-05:00

If the economy is getting better, then why did new home sales in the United States hit a brand new all-time record low during 2011?

If the economy is getting better, then why are there 6 million less jobs in America today than there were before the recession started?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the average duration of unemployment in this country close to an all-time record high?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of homeless female veterans more than doubled?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans on food stamps increased by 3 million since this time last year and by more than 14 million since Barack Obama entered the White House?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of children living in poverty in America risen for four years in a row?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the percentage of Americans living in "extreme poverty" at an all-time high?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the Federal Housing Administration on the verge of a financial collapse?

If the economy is getting better, then why do only 23 percent of American companies plan to hire more employees in 2012?

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of self-employed Americans fallen by more than 2 million since 2006?

If the economy is getting better, then why did an all-time record low percentage of U.S. teens have a job last summer?

If the economy is getting better, then why does median household income keep declining? Overall, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% since December 2007 once you account for inflation.

If the economy is getting better, then why has the number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by 10 million since 2006?

If the economy is getting better, then why is the average age of a vehicle in America now sitting at an all-time high?

If the economy is getting better, then why are 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida currently sitting vacant?

If the economy is getting better, then why are 19 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 living with their parents?

If the economy is getting better, then why does the number of "long-term unemployed workers" stay so high? When Barack Obama first took office, the number of "long-term unemployed workers" in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.

From The Economic Collapse via Rhymes With Right. Do visit both sites for additional analysis.

The Broken Clock Theory, Bill Maher, & The Occupy Movement "D-Bags"

2012-02-04T17:52:00.001-05:00

Like a broken clock, even Bill Maher gets something right once or twice a day:

(H/T News Busters)

What Is Romney's Vision & What Does It Mean For Our Country?

2012-02-04T16:26:00.000-05:00

"I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there."
Mitt Romney, CNN Interview, 1 February 2012

As Mark Levin asked on his show the other day, does Romney have a clue about capitalism? I would add, does he have a clue about the failure of the welfare state, the plight of those caught in generational poverty, or for that matter, the role of Democrats in insuring that nothing is done about it?

My gravest concern about Romney's electability is that the left is going to be able to successfully portray him as a combination Dr. Evil / Gordon Gecko / Robber barron in what is going to be a take no prisoners bout of class warfare. And if they do, Obama may well win. After all, if nothing else, Romney's campaign has taught us how saturation negative ads can indeed work to destroy one's opponent, irrespective of fairness or accuracy.

What Romney said in the quote above is beyond tin ear. It not only plays right into the left's class warfare meme, it just shows almost a complete failure to grasp the plight of America. The left will make a huge deal out of this. The right should also, as we are getting very close to making this man our nominee for President.

What a conservative candidate should have said:

President Obama's economy has driven millions of people into poverty and threatens to drive many more there unless we turn things around. History tells us with 100% certainty that the way to do that is through capitalism and wealth creation.

And yet, President Obama answer to all of this is to punish wealth creation out of "fairness." That language is also found in the history books. It is the language of class warfare, of socialism, and of economic ruin. Obama's appeal to "fairness" falsely appeals to our sense of justice. Inevitably, it will cripple our nation and make life that much harder for our declining middle class.

President Obama thinks he can tax and regulate us to prosperity. He thinks that he can do better than capitalism by pouring billions into creating new markets out of whole cloth with huge government mandates. President Obama's idea of capitalism is crony capitalism, where he, not the marketplace, picks the winners and losers. It is great if you are a crony of the President - but it hurts every other person in this country. No nation on earth has ever succeeded with the economic policies this President embraces.

But even beyond that, the welfare and entitlement society are driving our nation into bankruptcy. As to the welfare state, it has utterly failed the many poor in our society who are caught in generational cycles of poverty. It is a tragedy and a travesty that fifty years on from the start of the welfare state, 25% of the black population is still living below the poverty line. But we know how to stop that cycle. Education is the key. To paraphrase Juan Williams, the most important thing we can do for the perennial poor is to allow their children to receive precisely the same level of quality education that President Obama's children receive.

Sasha and Malia are receiving the very finest education available in a private school in Washinton D.C. Yet one of the first acts of President Obama was to end a program that gave the poor children of Washington, D.C. the opportunity to get that same education as his children. Instead, President Obama consigned the DC's poor to the worst public educational system in America. He did that because the Teacher's Unions - the economic foundation of the Democrat Party and the single biggest impediment to improving education in America - complained.

Unfortunately, if you vote for President Obama, if you are poor or, for that matter, for many in the middle class, your children will never get that opportunity that Sasha and Malia Obama have. There is no excuse for any child born of this country to be forced into a substandard education. Unfortunately, that cycle will never end under President Obama and the Democrats, because they value the dollars they get from the Teachers' unions more than they care about the generational poor in this country.

We really are at an absolutely critical point in our nation's history. Progressivism has built up in our machinery of state to levels that have worked fundamental change to our nation and that threaten to drag us down into bankruptcy and societal failure. Wholesale fundamental changes need to occur to clean out the machinery before it becomes irrevocably broken. Our educational system desperately needs to be overhauled. The out of control regulatory bureaucracies need to be systemically altered to restore democratic control. The EPA should never be able to regulate carbon without an affirmative vote of Congress. HHS should never be able to force Christians to fund acts that directly violate their religion's core beleifs without an affirmative vote of Congress. The FCC should never be able to unilaterally exercise control over the internet without an affirmative vote of Congress. The methods by which the left funnels hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to left wing organizations needs to end. Unions need to be brought to heel. No person in America should be forced to pay dues to a union simply so that they can get a job in a particular industry. The greens' keys to the courthouse, where decisions are made that should only be made by Congress, needs to end. The left's war on our military needs to end before we become so weakened that other nation's are willing to become adventurous. And then there are the entitlement programs that have us on the knife's edge of ruin.

I look at all of the above and ask myself, will Romney make any of those changes? Does he have a vision for America that addresses any of these fundamental issues? I don't think so. At best, I think that he will tinker around the margins for most of them. Villagers With Torches has a very good post up answering the question similarly. But each primary voter really needs to look at it and answer that question for themselves. Romney would be better for America than Obama, true, but is he, at this critical moment, the best choice that Republicans can make?

Jon McNaughton's The Forgotten Man

2012-02-04T11:42:00.000-05:00

The Forgotten Man, a painting by artist Jon McNaughton, shows Obama treading on the Constitution, surrounded by all other Presidents who are either cheering him on (FDR, Clinton, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson) or reacting in horror (Madison, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Reagan, Lincoln). Nearby sits a man representing the people in America.

I hadn't seen this before today. It was released in 2010 and resurfaced recently on MSNBC. Apparently, the left, for some reason unbeknownst to me, considers this "controversial." Looks pretty accurate to me.

This from McNaughton explains the background of his painting.

Is Euthanasia Every Justified

2012-02-04T03:23:00.000-05:00

At least, perhaps, her organs might save the lives of others.

Brain-Dead Teen, Only Capable Of Rolling Eyes And Texting, To Be Euthanized

(H/T The Scratching Post and Kelly The Little Black Dog)

Warmie Angst & The AGW Theory Hanging By A Single Untested Hypothesis

2012-02-02T15:48:00.000-05:00

The warmies are experiencing some epic angst over the letter published several days ago in the WSJ from sixteen distinguished scientists, addressed to our political leaders, stating that global warming is not an issue with which they needed to be concerned. The warmies have responded at the WSJ with a letter from Kevin Trenberth that is jaw dropping in its arrogance and utterly revealing about the state of the anthropogenic global warming theory.

Trenberth's first argument is that the only people that can make judgements about the validity of global warming are "climate scientists." As he puts it, "[d]o you consult your dentist about your heart problem?" But the reality is that "climate science" overlaps significantly with other disciplines, such as physics, meteorology, oceanography, statistics and computer programming to name but a few. Trenberth gives us no reason whatsoever to discount the opinions of experts in these areas when making assessments of global warming. And as Jo Nova responds with tongue in cheek:

If my dentist tells me that my heart surgeon was caught emailing other surgeons about how to use tricks to hide declines, that he broke laws of reason, that his predictions are basically all wrong, or that his model of understanding is demonstrably wrong, then I’m listening to the dentist.

What is most troubling - and unbelievably arrogant - about Trenberth's argument is that he implies that if you are one of the non-scientists, your only recourse is to blindly trust in the pronouncements of "climate scientists." What pure and utter bullshit.

What can - and should - we non-scientists do to assess climate science?

Number one, and perhaps most importantly, we can look at the underlying mechanics of a claimed scientific finding to see whether it is based on an experiment that complies with the scientific method - i.e., all the data, methodology, computer programs, etc. are archived and made public so that the results can be analyzed and reproduced by others. If not - and SO MUCH of climate science does not - then we should accord it zero reliability.

We can even take that a step further in evaluating experiments and just take a look at the size of the experimental sample. If it is large and diverse, then we can mark it down as at least some indication that the results might be trustworthy. If the sample is extremely small, that is a red flag that the scientist may be cherry picking data to get the result that they want - as happened with the infamous Yamal Tree Ring study.

We can look at how the temperature record itself is compilied - and make common sense judgments about whether the methods used are uniform and reliable. And if they are not, if there appear to be significant problems with the numbers of temperature stations, their location, and whether they are subject to heat island effect, then we should be very skeptical indeed

We can look at changes to the temperature records to see whether there is any justification for the changes. And if the changes are to make the older temperatures colder and the later temperatures warmer with no justification given, we can be suspicious that we are being sold a bill of goods.

We can look at the geologic record and see if the claims being made about our modern climate are reasonable within the larger picture. So if at numerous points in history when there was no human contribution to CO2, the climate was warmer than today, we can legitimately ask why we should believe that increasing temperatures, as we emerge from the Little Ice Age, are in any way unusual, and proof of a human component to climate change.

We can look at the computer models to determine whether they are accurately predicting the heating or cooling of our climate. And if they are not (and all IPCC comuter models fail that test today), then we have no reason to trust the pronouncements of the warmies.

And we can tell whether there are gaping logical disconnects in the warmie arguments. Indeed, Trenberth makes a huge, gigantic, massive, leap in logic in his WSJ article, asking us to take an untested hypothesis as fact. I'll save that critically important pearl for last. First, let's deal with the following:

Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record. Observations show unequivocally that our planet is getting hotter.

Wow. I seem to recall that a week ago, all of those climate scientists at the MET and the University of East Anglia, two warmie institutions at the heart of climate science (not to mention Climategate), just told us 'unequivocally' that our planet had not warmed at all over the past 15 years. So Trenberth is deliberately ignoring that to make his absolutist claim. He has obvious problems with veracity. So why should we trust anything that he says.

Actually, this latest finding from MET and East Anglia stands in direct contradiction to Jim Hansen's NASA GISS temperature record. The GISS records show red hot warming over the past 15 years. GISS and MET data line up through 1998, but diverge thereafter because Hansen claims that there is massive warming going on in the Arctic region. There is minimal coverage of temperature stations in the Arctic, and Hansen's claims are based almost wholly on a number of questionable extrapolations. Indeed, even while Hansen is showing the Arctic on fire over the past 15 years, we are seeing increases in polar ice there - something that wholly undermines Hansen's claims. So what Trenberth is doing is the time tested climate scientist technique of cherry picking the data he wants. And since the MET data undermines his argument, he is pretending it simply doesn't exist.

And one more note before leaving the above quote. Trenberth writes that the last decade has been the "warmest decade on record." Now, I will bet that most non-scientists reading that will believe that we are experiencing world record temperatures over the course of geologic time. But in reality, "on record" is shorthand for the period since 1880, when relatively reliable temperature record keeping began. Warmies rarely seem to explain that when they make their pronouncements.

Trenberth later makes mention of his 2009 e-mail wherein he bemoaned the fact that the world had stopped warming and the warmies couldn't explain it. So what has changed since 2009? It's the mother of all logical jumps.

[C]omputer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean. Such periods are a relatively common climate phenomenon, are consistent with our physical understanding of how the climate system works, and certainly do not invalidate our understanding of human-induced warming or the models used to simulate that warming.

Did you catch those two things? One, Trenberth's e-mail is directly undermining the claim of Hansen's NASA GISS that we have had continued warming of surface temperatures over the past 15 years. Obviously Trenberth didn't believe it when he wrote his 2009 e-mail bemoaning the lack of warming. And today Trenberth is taking the position that the surface temperatures have not warmed, but the deep oceans have. So there is no doubt Trenberth is being less than honest when he now embraces Hansen's surface temperature numbers as definitive. But that is not the big thing.

The huge, gigantic, enormous thing in the above statement is this - Trenberth et. al, when he couldn't explain the flatlining of temperatures over the past 15 years, built a new computer model that has spit out a projection that significant warming is going on in the deep oceans. How that happens without warming the middle layers of the ocean is a mystery, but lets leave that aside for the moment. What the computer has spit out is AN UNTESTED HYPOTHESIS. In other words, Trenberth DOES NOT HAVE THE DATA to support his conclusion that global warming has gone deep into the oceans. Deep water temperature testing only began with ARGO in 2003, and there is nowhere near the data at this point to even suggest that the ocean depths have, over the past 15 years, absorbed the massive amount of heat that Trenberth's model projects. So simply put, no one today can validate it. Warming in the deep ocean is not known to be "common" on the basis of any observed data. So in other words, this scurrilous man is asking us to accept the absolute truth of anthropogenic global warming not on data or proven fact, but ON FAITH THAT HIS LATEST COMPUTER MODEL may be right. That is the antithesis of science.

This is incredibly revealing. It means that the AGW theory is literally hanging on by an untested hypothesis today. It also means that, for the first time since the global warming canard started, it is, today, capable of being falsified. After the moving of goal post after goal post, we finally might be at the point that there is no more space for the warmies to move it. It is put up or shut up time for Trenberth and the warmies. Show us observed facts, not a computer generated hypothesis..

Lastly, Trenberth falls back on the tried and true argument that all people should accept the truth of anthropogenic global warming because it is generally accepted by all right thinking scientists whose papers are accepted for peer reviewed publication. Compare that argument with this:

No theory is carved in stone. Science is merciless when it comes to testing all theories over and over, at any time, in any place. Unlike religion or politics, science is ultimately decided by experiments, done repeatedly in every form. There are no sacred cows. In science, 100 authorities count for nothing. Experiment counts for everything.

That is from physicist Micho Kaku's article, Has A Speeding Neutrino Really Overturned Einstein, in the WSJ last year. It would seem that Mr. Kaku has a very different opinion than Mr. Trenberth as to what constitutes actual "science" and how much trust should be placed in the weight of authorities. Indeed, it would seem that Trenberth is doing anything but making valid scientific arguments.

At the end of the day, there needs to be a reckoning. The "climate scientists" who have sold us on the canard of global warming cannot escape with their careers intact. And to the extent that they have committed knowing fraud, they need to be punished criminally. Those organizations that have told us the sicience is settled need to lose access to all federal funding. And the entire system of federal grants for research needs to be thoroughly overhauled. And lastly, we as a nation ought to demand that any scientist who receives federal funding to conduct an experiment must completely comply with the scientific method, making every bit of data, methodology, and computer programs immediately available so that their work can be validated or falsified. This global warming scam, so costly to our world, cannot be allowed to simply fade into the night as the theory is disproven. They have caused too much damage to entire economies and they have grossly eroded the faith of the average person in the trustworthiness of our scientific community. Examples need to be made.

Former CIA Chief Hayden Bathing In Schadenfreude Over AG Holder

2012-02-02T00:53:00.001-05:00

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden has been so overcome by his schadenfreude over the many problems now besetting AG Eric Holder that Hayden had to share it with the world or burst. As you read this, you can almost hear Hayden laughing and rubbing his hands in glee at the poetic justice being dealt to Eric Holder. It really makes for a fun read.

This from Gen. Hayden writing at CNN:

Schadenfreude -- joy at the misfortune of others -- is a bad thing.

So I've been trying to resist temptation these past months as I watch Attorney General Eric Holder deal with public and congressional reaction to the "Fast and Furious" scheme, the failed attempt by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to seed and then track U.S. firearms to Mexican drug cartels.Fast and Furious was a secretive, high-risk operation seemingly intended to deal with an intractable problem abroad. . . .

. . . Now Holder , , , must defend himself against some very tough accusations, including one by some skeptics that the operation was intended principally to discredit, and thereby justify further regulation of, firearms dealers.This is where the schadenfreude comes in.

After the congressional elections of 2006, the CIA was forced to defend edgy (often controversial and sometimes unsuccessful) actions in a tough political environment. President George W. Bush was politically weakened, the Senate and the House were under Democratic control and a presidential election was in the offing.

On the Hill, the questions were aggressive, often partisan and, in my view, sometimes even deeply mean-spirited and unfair to the many intelligence professionals who were putting their lives and careers on the line in a very successful effort to protect America from further attack. The agency dealt with the committees as best a nonpolitical organization could, fully recognizing that, although congressional oversight was a necessary instrument, it could sometimes be a difficult one.

But any personal instinct toward some common "executive branch" empathy for Holder is muted not only by the dubious character of Fast and Furious, but by some of the attorney general's other actions, as well. While out of office, for example, he famously called for a "reckoning" for CIA officers and other officials who authorized and conducted operations that were edgy and risky and intended to deal with difficult circumstances.

Once in office, he launched a "reckoning" of CIA renditions, detentions and interrogations of terrorists by directing the Justice Department to reopen investigations closed years before by career prosecutors. This decision was opposed by then-CIA Director Leon Panetta and seven of his predecessors, and Holder reportedly made the decision without reading detailed memos prepared by those career prosecutors declining to pursue further proceedings.

The CIA officers affected by this may be forgiven some feelings of irony when they now hear the attorney general repudiating some of the charges made against his officers by stating: "Those who serve in the ranks of law enforcement are our nation's heroes and deserve our nation's thanks, not the disrespect that is being heaped on them by those who see political advantage."

Of course, it was also Holder who decided in 2009 to release what had been secret DOJ memos outlining the details and providing the legal justification for the Bush administration's interrogation program. The release was defended by the administration as part of a broad commitment to "transparency."

Holder may have had even more in mind though as, according to a contemporary Newsweek account of the decision, the leadership of the Department of Justice calculated that "if the public knew the details, ... there would be a groundswell of support for an independent probe," and that when the decision to release those memos had been made, the attorney general and his leadership team "celebrated quietly, and waited for the national outrage to begin."

Later that summer, Holder also released a previously classified CIA inspector general report on the interrogation program as the administration seemed to be actively shaping this story to put its predecessor's actions in the worst possible light.

As I said, schadenfreude is a bad thing. But it is sometimes hard to avoid, especially when life seems to come full circle.

Attorney General Eric Holder has made it clear that he thinks he has been subjected to a heavily politicized process over Fast and Furious.

If he has -- and that's still an if -- I suspect that some folks at CIA know exactly how he feels.

You have to love how he refuses to give Holder the benefit of the doubt as to whether he is actually being subject to an unjust process. I had almost as fun reading this as I am sure Hayden had in writing it.

From Our Pockets To Far Left Activist Groups - Democrat Corruption At Work

2012-02-01T17:21:00.000-05:00

That stench of corruption you smell is most likely the odor emanating from Obama Administration and Attorney General Eric Holder's Office. At least a portion of what you are smelling is how the Democrats are funneling tax dollars and bank fines to far left community activist organizations - for these organization to then in turn use in support of Democrats. It is as corrupt a practice as you will find in any banana republic.

It works like this. Democrats pass a law, take Dodd Frank for example, which could also reasonably be called the ACORN Full Employment Act. In it, the Democrats specify that a portion of our tax dollars are to be used to fund local organizations, ostensibly to conduct education and counseling of minorities or the elderly on financial matters. The government than enters into a multi-year contract with one of the many far left activist organizations for millions of dollars. A variety of far left organizations wholly survive on our tax dollars through this scam, the most infamous being, until their recent dissolution, ACORN. It is completely legal. It is utterly corrupt. And because of contractual obligations, the Democrats are able to keep this scam going even during periods of Republican control of Congress.

But that is not the only method by which Democrats funnel millions in funds to partisan left wing groups. A variant on the above theme is for the Justice Department to direct that banks owing fines for "race discrimination" have to pay a portion of the fines directly to whatever private radical left organization the Justice Department directs. This too is ostensibly justified on the grounds of educating minorities. The difference here, as the IBD article below makes clear, is that the left are on far shakier legal grounds when going this route.

Just as an aside, these shakedowns of banks for "racism" in lending practices are precisely what led to our economic meltdown in 2008 by destroying credit standards. Invariably in these cases, no single act of racial discrimination is ever proven to have occurred. Rather a bank is held liable if its lending practices show a disparate impact on minorities. That means that statistically, a bank did not make enough loans to minorities - irrespective of how colorblind the bank's lending standards are, irrespective of its outreach to minorities, and indeed, irrespective of whether it statistically rejected more applications from whites than minorities. It is a travesty. This use of disparate impact theory was held, for all intents and purposes, unlawful by the Supreme Court in the employment context in the pivotal 2010 Ricci v. Destafano case. It should be unlawful in all contexts. There is no place for racism in our society, but the disparate impact theory doesn't punish racism, it punishes institutions for results wholly irrespective of actual racism and thus it deeply distorts our economy.

At any rate, back to the topic at hand. It is the Justice Department funneling fines to left wing organizations that is rearing its ugly head today. This from IBD:

Last week, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith fired off a three-page letter to Attorney General Eric Holder warning that his recent punishment of Bank of America's mortgage unit seemed political. In fact, he may have abused his power.

As IBD first reported Jan. 4, 'BofA Must Pay Excess Settlement Funds To Acorn Clones," the $335 million lending-bias deal requires BofA to fork over a chunk of the payout to leftist groups not connected to the suit.

The unusual term is part of a secret Justice program to redistribute millions in settlement cash to third parties instead of alleged victims.

Critics told IBD it's a "political backdoor" to subsidize Democrat-tied bank shakedown groups. . . .

Under the order, excess funds will be handed to groups that "provide education, counseling and other assistance to low-income and minority borrowers."

The corrupt group, [ACORN,] which has re-emerged under other names after coming under investigation in 2009, continues to receive federal funds. Acorn Housing Corp. got some $700,000 in federal money after changing its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America.

Last year, Holder also ordered two AIG-owned banks to pay a minimum of $1 million to "qualified organizations" that help "African-American borrowers."

More recently, he ordered C&F Mortgage Corp. of Virginia to reward such groups. As of 2010, some $7.6 million was waiting to be handed out from his unsupervised grant program. Recipients aren't restricted in how they use the money. In 2008, Acorn bankrolled get-out-the-vote operations for Obama.

Justice would not provide a complete list of approved nonprofits, but a spokeswoman told IBD the National Urban League and Operation Hope are eligible for cash from the AIG case. Urban League has lobbied to water down credit standards. Operation Hope founder John Bryant serves on Obama's financial advisory council.

Smith demands that Holder furnish a full list of "qualified organizations," along with an audit of payments. Hearings are in order if his response is unsatisfactory.

Hats off to IBD for following up on this like a dog with a bone and getting the Republicans in congress to finally move off their posteriors. Nothing that I am aware of authorizes the Justice Department to direct that fines otherwise payable to the government be directed to non-party organizations.

I am waiting for the day when a financial institution finally appeals the use of disparate impact theory in lending to the Supreme Court. This is social engineering at its worst, it was the "but for" cause of the 2008 economic crash and our continuing economic woes, and yet the Obama administration and the Holder Justice Department are pushing it harder than ever before. It is setting us on a second course for disaster.

A Little Refreshment For The Soul - When Harry Met Buddy

2012-02-01T06:03:00.000-05:00

Harry James was the best jazz and big band trumpet player in my lifetime. Interestingly, quite a few of the great singers and musicians of the era - Frank Sinatra, Doris Day and Buddy Rich to name a few - where graduates of his big band.

One of my all-time favorite songs was one Harry James played with the premier drummer of the era - Buddy Rich. It is called James Session. The first two minutes are the entire band. The last three are Harry and Buddy. Enjoy.

Later in his career, when I was about 14 and had the opportunity to sit and speak with Mr. James during a break in one of his concerts, I asked if he would do James Session. He told me that he and Buddy Rich put that number together and he would never even attempt it with any other drummer. I also asked him about the greatest musical influences on his style. He told me he learned jazz by emulating Louis Armstrong and he learned a sweet, schmaltzy tone with a lot of vibrato from his mother, an opera singer.

And as a bonus, here is Harry's theme song, Ciribiribin. It contains that unique mix of schmaltz and technical mastery that made James the best of trumpeter of my lifetime.

For Trumpeters Only

If you are wondering what Harry played, his mouthpiece was unique. He played a Parduba Double Cup. He was playing in Benny Goodman's band in 1938 in a concert hall across from the Parduba store. He happened to walk in and try out their unique mouthpice, which actually has a second cup inside. It makes it surprisingly easy to go into the upper register and it gives out a really nice tone. When I spoke with him in early 70's at the concert I mentioned above, I asked him what mouthpiece he would recommend because mine ended up cutting up the inside of my lip after a 3 hour session. He asked what I played. When I told him a Bach, he said one word "Nazi," (apparently he had some residual angst left over from WWII) then reached over to his case and gave me his spare mouthpiece. It's the only thing I've played on since.

His trumpet was a custom made King "Golden Flair" dual bore trumpet. That's another one I got through Mr. James. I don't know if King even produces them anymore. You can get a tone out of that horn so full and sweet it will bring tears to your eyes. It is the perfect trumpet for mid-range jazz. It is not the horn if you want to be playing in the high note range above double F - maybe a double G if you're willing to risk a hernia and some burst veins in your eyes. But for everything else, it can't be beat.

Hope, Change, & Lies About Green Energy Jobs

2012-02-01T04:56:00.000-05:00

Anyone remember those green energy jobs promises . . .

First came the hope - Obama would create 5 million green energy jobs in the U.S.

Then came the pocket change - Obama promised to spend up to $150 billion to subsidize this new sector.

Now hope and change meet reality. This from the USA Today:

House Republicans are expanding their probe into the Obama administration's energy programs, investigating $500 million in green job training grants that placed just 10% of trainees in jobs, according to a government report.

The program's goal was to train 124,893 people and put 79,854 in jobs. But 17 months later, 52,762 were trained and 8,035, or roughly 1 in 10, had jobs. Those numbers come from an audit by the Department of Labor's inspector general, which recommended that the administration end the program and return unspent money.

President Obama has made green jobs a cornerstone of his economic agenda. In his first 2012 campaign ad this month, he said clean energy industries created 2.7 million jobs and were "expanding rapidly." . . .

The Green energy jobs revolution has been a monstrously expensive left wing fantasy from day one. Obama's attempt to turn this epic failure into a positive just defies reality - and all of the facts.

To the extent Obama is claiming that 2.7 million jobs exist in the "clean energy industries," that is an out and out lie. There are 2.7 million jobs in America that can nominally be defined as "green collar" - but only if you interpret "green" broadly enough to encompass things such as Mass Transit bus drivers, waste water treatment workers, and virtually any job associated with reclamation or recycling. The vast majority of those positions predated Obama. Today, "[o]nly 138,000 jobs . . . - roughly 5 percent of jobs identified - are green energy jobs that actually produce energy (like wind, solar, hydro)" That's a bit short of the 5 million new green energy jobs that Obama promised.

The reality is that Obama's push for green energy jobs has been every bit the disaster for our nation that his push for green energy itself has been. For Obama now to claim this epic failure as positive marks him as not merely as a facile liar, but as an utterly shameless one.

Science, Anti-Science & Education

2012-02-01T02:26:00.000-05:00

But in the end, this is a victory for science. No theory is carved in stone. Science is merciless when it comes to testing all theories over and over, at any time, in any place. Unlike religion or politics, science is ultimately decided by experiments, done repeatedly in every form. There are no sacred cows. In science, 100 authorities count for nothing. Experiment counts for everything.
Micho Kaku, Has A Speeding Neutrino Really Overturned Einstein, WSJ, 26 Sep. 2011

The above quote of Michio Kaku came as part of his discussion of the CERN finding that neutrinos might travel faster than the speed of light, thus defying Einstein's theory of relativity and falsifying virtually the entire foundation of modern physics. As Mr. Kaku, himself a physicist, makes crystal clear, what separates science from religion is reproducability. Asking the world to take the finding of an experiment on faith - or peer review, for that matter - is not science. Experiments must be archived and all data and methodology made public as the first immutable step in the scientific method. Moreover, if the results are not capable of being falsified, then it falls outside the definition of science and enters into the theological realm of faith.

Why do I bring all of this up? I for one firmly believe in the scientific method. I believe that science, properly done through the scientific method, will tell me the "how" of our world, wherever it may lead. There is no tension between my respect for science and my faith in religion to tell me the "why." And yet, according to our modern Orwellian left, I am "anti-science."

What the left means by that charge is that I refuse to accept, on the basis of peer review alone, the many warmie assertions about anthropogenic global warming (AGW). The IPCC and the modern left have, when it comes to global warming, tried to substitute peer review as the gold standard for reliability as opposed to making their methodology and data fully available for testing by other scientists. They use computer models to forecast global warming, yet they don't release the programming code so that it can be analyzed and either validated or falsified. Jim Hansen - a fraud who should be behind bars - doesn't just massage our temperature record, he blatantly alters it behind closed doors. The warmies top all of this off with the claim that the science surrounding global warming is settled. It is the antithesis of actual science as posited by Micho Kaku. It truly is anti-science.

What rattled my cage on this issue today were two posts. The first is by Rand Simberg, discussing how the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has "announced that it's going to take on climate change denial" in k-12 education:

. . . [A]fter hearing an increasing number of anecdotes about K-12 teachers being challenged about how they taught climate science to their students, she says she began to see "parallels" between the two debates --namely, an ideological drive from pressure groups to "teach the controversy" where no scientific controversy exists. . . .

“There’s a climate of confusion in this country around climate science,” says McCaffrey, and NCSE’s goal will be to ensure that “teachers have the tools they need if they get pushback and feel intimidated.” Recent surveys, such as one done among K-12 teachers in September by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), suggest that attacks on climate education are far from rare. NSTA found that over half of the respondents reported having encountered global warming scepticism from parents, and 26% had encountered it from administrators. And a December survey from the National Earth Science Teachers’ Association found that 36% of its 555 K-12 teachers who currently teach climate science had been “influenced” to “teach the controversy.”

As a threshold matter, if only 36% of science teachers in the U.S. are teaching both sides of the AGW debate, than our science education is in deep, deep trouble. Parent's need to be checking their children's science curriculum and raising holy hell if their children are part of the 64% who are being indoctrinated by the warmies. Indeed, to go one further, any global warming curriculum that does not include at least a class on Henrick Svensmark's theory - that solar activity and its effect on cloud formation is the primary determinant of our warming and cooling - is not a balanced curriculum.

As to the NCSE, they embrace the position that the "science is settled" and that the mountain of contravening theories and evidence are to ignored. The fact that warming has stopped for the past fifteen years despite steadily increasing human contributions of CO2, the fact that the geologic record shows that there has been nothing unusual about the recent warming of our planet, the fact that all of the computer models predicting global warming have proven utterly worthless, the fact that much of the "science" upon which AGW rests has never been subject to the type of analysis, criticism and reproduction that define the scientific method - all of these are to be ignored? Where in hell do people like the NCSE come from? What they seek is indoctrination, not the teaching of science as a method of acquiring knowledge. It is the very definition of anti-science.

The second post that caught my eye was an article at Space.com entitled "The Crackpot Theory of Everything Reveals The Dark Side of Peer Review." It is about an article that passed peer review yet had obvious defects in methodology and findings. Peer review is, at the very best, nothing more than a tool by which scientific publications can be reasonably sure that an article has been reviewed and found plausible by other experts - not that the findings themselves are accurate or have been reproduced. Peer review is not, and never will be, a substitute for the scientific method. It is those who would have it so that are "anti-science."

At any rate, my suggestion is this. The next time a warmie puts a bull horn up to your ear and yells "anti-science," look him square in the eye, tell him global warming is anti-science, and proceed to repetitively kick him square in the crotch until he experiences an epiphany. It seems the only way we will ever get through to these little Orwellian nightmares.

An American's Introduction To Spicy Hot Food

2012-01-31T03:03:00.001-05:00

Natal, South Africa, has the highest quota of Indians outside of India - and it's famous for the Natal Curry Contest.

They have the contest about June/July. It takes up a major portion of a parking lot at the Royal Show in PMB.

Last year, Judge #3 was an inexperienced food critic named Frank, who was visiting from America.

Frank: "Recently, I was honoured to be selected as a judge at a Curry Cook-off. The original person called in sick at the last moment and so I happened to be standing there at the judge's table asking for directions to the Beer Garden when the call came in. I was assured by the other two judges (Natal Indians) that the curry wouldn't be all that spicy and, besides, they told me I could have free beer during the tasting, so I accepted".

Here are the scorecard notes from the event:

CURRY # 1 - SEELAN'S MANIAC MONSTER TOMATO CURRY...

Judge # 1 -- A little too heavy on the tomato. Amusing kick.

Judge # 2 -- Nice smooth tomato flavour. Very mild.

Judge # 3 (Frank) -- Holy shit, what the hell is this stuff? You could remove dried paint from your driveway. Took me two beers to put the flames out. I hope that's the worst one. These people are crazy.

CHILI # 2 - PHOENIX BBQ CHICKEN CURRY...

Judge # 1 -- Smoky, with a hint of chicken. Slight chili tang.

Judge # 2 -- Exciting BBQ flavour, needs more peppers to be taken seriously.

Judge # 3 -- Keep this out of the reach of children. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to taste besides pain. I had to wave off two people who wanted to give me the Heimlich manoeuvre! They had to rush in more beer when they saw the look on my face.

CURRY # 3 - SHAMILA'S FAMOUS "BURN DOWN THE GARAGE" CURRY...

Judge # 1 -- Excellent firehouse curry. Great kick.

Judge # 2 -- A bit salty, good use of chili peppers.

Judge # 3 -- Call 911. I've located a uranium spill. My nose feels like I have been snorting Drain Cleaner. Everyone knows the routine by now. Get me more beer before I ignite. Barmaid pounded me on the back, now my backbone is in the front part of my chest. I'm getting pissed from all the beer.

CHILI # 4 - BABOOS BLACK MAGIC BEAN CURRY...

Judge # 1 -- Black bean curry with almost no spice. Disappointing.

Judge # 2 -- Hint of lime in the black beans. Good side dish for fish or other mild foods, not much of a curry.

Judge # 3 -- I felt something scraping across my tongue, but was unable to taste it. Is it possible to burn out taste buds? Shareen, the beer maid, was standing behind me with fresh refills. That 300 lbs. woman is starting to look HOT...just like this nuclear waste I'm eating! Is chili an aphrodisiac?

CHILI # 5 LALL'S LEGAL LIP REMOVER...

Judge # 1 -- Meaty, strong curry. Cayenne peppers freshly ground, adding considerable kick. Very impressive.

Judge # 2 -- Average beef curry, could use more tomato. Must admit the chili peppers make a strong statement.

Judge # 3 -- My ears are ringing, sweat is pouring off my forehead and I can no longer focus my eyes. I farted and four people behind me needed paramedics. The contestant seemed offended when I told her that her chili had given me brain damage. Shareen saved my tongue from bleeding by pouring beer directly on it from the pitcher. I wonder if I'm burning my lips off. It really pisses me off that the other judges asked me to stop screaming. Screw them

CHILI # 6 - VERISHNEE'S VEGETARIAN VARIETY...

Judge # 1 -- Thin yet bold vegetarian variety curry. Good balance of spices and peppers.

Judge # 2 -- The best yet. Aggressive use of peppers, onions, and garlic. Superb.

Judge # 3 -- My intestines are now a straight pipe filled with gaseous, sulphuric flames. I am definitely going to shit myself if I fart and I'm worried it will eat through the chair. No one seems inclined to stand behind me except that Shareen. Can't feel my lips anymore. I need to wipe my ass with a snow cone ice cream.

CHILI # 7 - SELINA'S "MOTHER-IN-LAW'S-TONGUE" CURRY...

Judge # 1 -- A mediocre curry with too much reliance on canned peppers.

Judge # 2 -- Ho hum, tastes as if the chef literally threw in a can of chili peppers at the last moment. (I should take note at this stage that I am worried about Judge # 3. He appears to be in a bit of distress as he is cursing uncontrollably).

Judge # 3 -- You could put a grenade in my mouth, pull the pin, and I wouldn't feel a thing. I’ve lost sight in one eye, and the world sounds like it is made of rushing water. My shirt is covered with curry which slid unnoticed out of my mouth. My pants are full of lava to match my shirt. At least, during the autopsy, they’ll know what killed me. I've decided to stop breathing - it's too painful. Screw it; I'm not getting any oxygen anyway. If I need air I'll just suck it in through the 4-inch hole in my stomach.

CHILI # 8 - NAIDOOS TOENAIL CURLING CURRY...

Judge # 1 -- The perfect ending. This is a nice blend curry. Not too bold but spicy enough to declare its existence.

Judge # 2 -- This final entry is a good, balanced curry. Neither mild nor hot. Sorry to see that most of it was lost when Judge #3 farted, passed out, fell over and pulled the curry pot down on top of himself. Not sure if he's going to make it. Poor man, wonder how he'd have reacted to really hot curry?

Judge # 3 - No Report

(Stolen shamelessly from Oh What NOW)

Has Obama Launched The Catholic Church On The Tenth Crusade?

2012-01-30T21:38:00.000-05:00

The Crusades were a series of nine major military expeditions launched by the Catholic Church to defend Christianity against Islamic aggression during the Medieval period. It has been over 700 years since a Pope felt Christendom so under threat that he launched a Crusade. Yet Obama may have just kicked off the 10th Crusade - this one to be fought on American soil against the advance of radical secularism at the ballot box on the first Tuesday in November.

In 2008, "Catholics, who accounted for about a quarter of the electorate, supported Obama, at 54% to 46% for McCain." Thus, Catholics form a very important part of the Obama coalition. Which makes it inexplicable that he has gone to war against the Catholics over the issue of whether Catholic religious institutions and related organization will have to "provide health insurance to their employees which includes subsidized contraception, sterilization and coverage for abortion-inducing drugs. Last week, HHS ruled that they must.

But go to war Obama has. And the Catholic Church is responding in kind. The day before the HHS issued its regulations, the Pope weighed in on the "radical secularists" war on religion in the U.S. Obama ignored that shot across the bow - and now, things have escalated. In virtually every Catholic Church in the U.S., letters from the Bishops have been read from the pulpit, all identical in their gist:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

I write to you concerning an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the Church in the United States directly, and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith. The federal government, which claims to be “of, by, and for the people,” has just been dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees’ health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.

In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The Obama Administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.

We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second class citizens. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same. Our children and grandchildren deserve nothing less. . . .

Those are fighting words. Read the rest of the letter at IBD.

And it is not only Catholics that Obama has to worry about. This is going to effect all Christian organizations - and virtually all have similar opposition to abortion, if not contraception and sterilization. Obama has given the finger to each and every person of the Christian faith.

Even knee jerk uber liberal E.J. Dionne - an Obama sycophant of the highest order - is coming down on the side of the Catholics on this one. In his most recent column, he points out that Obama has violated his promises to America's religious population made in the run up to the 2008 election, as well as violating the historical tradition of government respect for the conscience of the religious. This from Mr. Dionne:

One of Barack Obama’s great attractions as a presidential candidate was his sensitivity to the feelings and intellectual concerns of religious believers. That is why it is so remarkable that he utterly botched the admittedly difficult question of how contraceptive services should be treated under the new health care law.

His administration mishandled this decision not once but twice. In the process, Obama threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus and strengthened the hand of those inside the Church who had originally sought to derail the health care law.

This might not be so surprising if Obama had presented himself as a conventional secular liberal. But he has always held himself to a more inclusive standard.

His deservedly celebrated 2006 speech on religion and American public life was a deeply sophisticated and carefully balanced effort to defend the rights of both believers and nonbelievers in a pluralistic republic.

Obama’s speech at Notre Dame’s graduation in 2009 was another tour de force. His visit to South Bend was highly controversial among right-wing Catholics. Yet his address temporarily silenced many of his critics because it showed an appreciation for the Catholic Church’s contributions to American life — particularly through its vast array of social-service and educational institutions — and an instinctive feeling for Catholic sensibilities. . . .

Speaking as a Catholic, I wish the Church would be more open on the contraception question. But speaking as an American liberal who believes that religious pluralism imposes certain obligations on government, I think the Church’s leaders had a right to ask for broader relief from a contraception mandate that would require it to act against its own teachings. The administration should have done more to balance the competing liberty interests here. . . .

“The tensions and the suspicions on each side of the religious divide will have to be squarely addressed,” Obama said back in 2006. “And each side will need to accept some ground rules for collaboration.” I wish the president had tried harder to find such rules here.

This decision fully illustrates the arrogance of the left, their disdain for Christianity, and their desire to push Christianity from the public square. It is both the most recent and, perhaps, the most significant attack in the U.S., in what has been a two hundred year war on Christianity. It is a war that started during the French Revolution, was given voice by socialism's greatest philosopher, Karl Marx, and has ever since been prosecuted by the secular left.

Professor Bainbridge, linked at the bottom of the page, points out that if the Catholic charities and social services only served Catholics, than these institutions would fall within the very narrow definition of religious organizations that HHS has carved out for exemption from the new healthcare rules. It is because of the very fact that the Catholic Church gives aid and charity to all regardless of their religion - and has done so since its inception two millennia ago - that HHS has chosen to subject the affiliated Church hospitals, schools and social organizations to this new mandate.

I find it hard to believe that Obama made this unforced error. Clearly he is pandering to his far left base. But in doing so, he is taking direct aim at religion. How historically ignorant do you have to be not to understand that you don't screw with peoples' religion.

True, its been almost a millenium since the Catholic Church launched a Crusade against such a fundamental attack on her religion. And it has been almost four centuries since the last of the Christian religious wars. But to think that Christian passions have so cooled that this will not drive the religious to vote their conscience in the 2012 election is, I think, a grand error.

Obama may be trying to fire up his base, but he has just done so at tremendous cost. If the election is close, this may prove the tipping point.

Update 2: Sen. Barbara Boxer has taken to the pages of the Huffington Post to engage in a truly Orwellian defense of a Obama's new policy. She claims that it actually advances religious freedom in America. Bookworm Room, in one of her finest efforts, has done a fisking of Boxer's column. It is a must read.

Update 1: Bookworm Room has a very thought provoking post on this topic:

There is nothing in the Constitution . . . that authorizes the Federal government (and, by extension through the 14th Amendment, any state government) to mandate that a religious institution be complicit in an act it believes constitutes murder. More to the point, the Constitutional grant of religious freedom, by which the government agrees to stay out of managing a religious institutions affairs, either practical or doctrinal, should prohibit such conduct entirely. This is one more example, as if we needed it, of the Obama administration’s fundamental lawlessness.

Nice Deb also has a great post on this issue: Obama Picks Fight With Catholic Church in an Election Year: Game On (w/videos)

Also much more on the statements issued throughout the U.S. in the comments to a post on Father Z's Blog.

Professor Bainbridge looks at the arguments of the left favoring the HHS decision and discusses how this is an attack on the charitable and social practices of the Catholic Church since its inception. It makes for a fascinating read.

Linked: Larwyn's Linx

Is The Florida Republican Party About To Sacrifice Congressman Allen West

2012-01-30T16:48:00.000-05:00

Allen West is one of the Republican party's most important national assets. He is deeply conservative, highly articulate, very intelligent, intellectually honest and a darling of the Tea Party movement. That he is also black gives extra weight to his highly critical commentary on the racial politics of the left. He is, by every account, a rising star in the Republican Party with national prominence. For all of these reasons, Rep. West is at the very top of the DNC's hit list of seats to challenge in 2012.

I know the world Allen West grew up in. He was a twenty year soldier - and their is no greater melting pot than the U.S. Army. It is a true meritocracy. It is an environment where the color of one's skin is meaningless. I can well imagine that LTC West was as horrified as I by the reality of the racial politics of the left when he was forced out of the service and into the civilian world. For those who don't know, LTC West's career ended in Iraq when he received intelligence that he and members of his unit were being targeted for assassination by several Iraqis. He captured one of the plotters and fired off his weapon to induce the detainee to discuss the plot. That ended the LTC's career. When asked if he would have done it again if the same scenario presented itself, West was unapologetic, stating, "[i]f it's about the lives of my soldiers at stake, I'd go through hell with a gasoline can." That is a soldier.

At any rate, Rep. West is a treasure of a Republican Party desperately in need of men and women like him. And yet, it appears that the Florida Republican Party, led by a Romney supporter, Will Weatherford, is going to sacrifice Rep. West as part of the redistricting process:

One of Governor Mitt Romney’s spokesmen was Florida Representative Will Weatherford, and during the course of his remarks in the “Spin Room”, he shed a very dim light on the ongoing redistricting process in the Florida Legislature. Over the past several weeks, many Republicans have voiced their disappointment towards the Republican legislature after the release of the preliminary redistricting maps. Much of the ire concerns the proposed boundaries of Congressman Allen West’s 22nd Congressional District that would be redrawn to include far more registered Democrats.

West’s congressional district inexplicably sheds the most Republican electoral support, in comparison to all other incumbent Republican and Democrat Congressman. A few weeks back we quoted an unnamed legislator saying that, “Allen West was screwed”, a statement which was originally made about made five months before the proposed maps were made public, leading insiders to believe that the fix was in against Allen West. But in light of Weatherford’s comment, it is increasingly clear that this is a fait accompli. (Read more- Allen West is Screwed)

According to Weatherford, those preliminary maps will not change- at the most, any additional changes would be minimal, and those changes would not make any appreciable difference from the preliminary maps. In addition, Weatherford stated that a deal was struck between him, Senate President Mike Haridopolos, and Senator Don Gaetz to finalize these maps and push them through as soon as possible. Weatherford also said that the proposed maps are in legal compliance with both the Voting Rights Act and Amendment 6.

So based on Weatherford’s comments, the 22nd Congressional District is now very much in play for the Democrat Party, and West is at an even larger disadvantage than he was previously- it will be a very difficult and expensive seat for Republicans to defend.

The only reasonable explanation for this is that the Florida Republican hierarchy has cut a deal with Democrats as part of the redistricting process. As the Shark Tank opined here:

So why would the “most conservative legislature” in Florida’s history look the other way as West’s congressional district lines are re-drawn? Is the fix really in to knock Allen West out of Congress? About five months ago, a very high ranking member of the Florida legislature gave me a very disturbing prediction regarding redistricting- “Allen West is screwed.” Take note that comment was made five months ago, long before the proposed maps were made public.

So are the poobahs in the Florida legislature really gunning to oust Allen West? Was a backroom deal made with the Democrat members of the legislature to put West’s seat into play in order to protect the other congressional seats that would favor any future runs for Congress by existing members of the Florida Legislature? The deals were struck, and the maps drawn behind closed doors.

It wouldn’t surprise us if this were the case. There is no love lost between the Florida legislature and Congressman Allen West, who has proven to be the anti-Republican establishment congressman. Back in the 2008 election cycle when West unsuccessfully ran for Congress, Republicans in the legislature did not support West. Former indicted Republican Party of Florida Boss Jim Greer and Governor Charlie Crist stayed out of the race until the very end, even after West’s Republican primary race was over.

Crist endorsed West four days prior to the general election, and Greer showed his support by writing West a personal check of $500 several weeks before the general election. This was also the case during the 2010 election cycle as state legislators sat on their hands, much like they did with Senator Marco Rubio. The Rubio saga is well documented, as the backdoor dirty deals and threats weighed heavy on the Rubio for Senate campaign against Crist.

In 2010, Will Weatherford, who is the current State House Redistricting Chairman, also supported Crist over Rubio before Crist left the GOP and ran as an Independent.

You may ask yourself why would the Florida GOP legislature not protect one of the most respected and beloved congressman in Washington D.C.? Could the reasons be as simple as sheer arrogance and self-political preservation by the Tallahassee elites?

There is rot at the heart of the Republican Party that I never knew existed until the start of the 2012 campaign season. What the Republican's are doing in Florida to Allen West is simply unforgivable. Weatherford and the Florida Republican Party needs to be condemned in no uncertain terms for this act.

The Daily Mail Crosses The Pond - & Spanks The NYT

2012-01-30T13:55:00.000-05:00

The UK's news paper / website, The Daily Mail, has become the premier website for trans-Atlantic readers. The Daily Mail has now launched a U.S. edition which, according to the BBC, now has more online traffic than that of the New York Times.

That is quite welcome for a number of reasons. One, the Daily Mail has a conservative bent and, indeed, publishes stories that many U.S. papers won't touch on such things as Islam and global warming. For instance, their most recent article on global warming, blogged here, should have been front page news around the world. It is a bombshell story, yet it seems that not a paper in the U.S. has touched it.

The Daily Mail also has some great opinion columnists, including the conservative Peter Hitchens, the acerbic Simon Heffer, and Melanie Phillips, author of Londonistan. The topics these columnists deal with are problems on both sides of the pond.

But while conservative thought subsumes most of the news end of the paper, it is not the only hook that is drawing in all the readers. As the BBC points out, the Daily Mail has a large section of daily celebrity gossip, and no one does glitz better than the Daily Mail. Just visit their website and see.

"Fairness" - The Essence Of Marx

2012-01-30T11:56:00.000-05:00

The worth of a good pundit is that they get to the essence of things with brevity and clarity. And here is Charles Krauthammer doing precisely that in his most recent article on Obama's State of the Union Flop:

Hope and change are long gone. It’s now equality and fairness.

That certainly is a large idea. Lenin and Mao went pretty far with it. As did Clement Attlee and his social-democratic counterparts in postwar Europe. . . .

Back in 2008, Obama was asked if he would still support raising the capital-gains tax rate (the intended effect of the Buffett Rule) if this would decrease government revenue.

Obama said yes. In the name of fairness.

This is redistribution for its own sake — the cost be damned. . . .

Are We About To See The Death Of The Global Warming Scam?

2012-01-30T03:56:00.000-05:00

The article in today's Daily Mail

Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)

- Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years

So what is the biggest bombshell in this article?

Is it that the MET and the University of East Anglia have confirmed that there has been no global warming for the past 15 years (contrary to NASA numbers from the despicable James Hansen?)

Is it that all of the IPCC computer models - predicated on the theory that the world will warm in direct proportion to increases in atmospheric CO2 - have failed utterly?

Is it that we seem to be heading into a lull in sunspot activity last seen during periods of intense global cooling - (in particular that period known as the little Ice Age that Michael Mann wiped from the historic records with his hockey stick graph?)

Or is it that we are about to see the heretical theory of Henrick Svensmark - that solar activity, not CO2, is the primary determinant of our globe's warming and cooling through cloud formation - finally given a real world trial? Note that the same theory passed its first test at CERN last year.

This from the Daily Mail:

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call ‘Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.

Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.

According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the ‘Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C.However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the ‘Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the ‘Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.

Interestingly, the MET is still taking the position that there will be no global cooling because it will all be offset by increasing carbon dioxide. Cue Henrick Svensmark:

‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’

He pointed out that, in claiming the effect of the solar minimum would be small, the Met Office was relying on the same computer models that are being undermined by the current pause in global-warming.

CO2 levels have continued to rise without interruption and, in 2007, the Met Office claimed that global warming was about to ‘come roaring back’. It said that between 2004 and 2014 there would be an overall increase of 0.3C. In 2009, it predicted that at least three of the years 2009 to 2014 would break the previous temperature record set in 1998.

So far there is no sign of any of this happening. But yesterday a Met Office spokesman insisted its models were still valid.

Talk about your deadenders. The MET is hanging onto their AGW CO2-centric models with the very edges of their bloody fingernails at this point. They won't be able to do it much longer.

‘We’re now well into the second decade of the pause,’ said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. ‘If we don’t see convincing evidence of global warming by 2015, it will start to become clear whether the models are bunk. And, if they are, the implications for some scientists could be very serious.’

So is tar and feathering serious enough for these world's greatest scam artists, or is something more serious warranted? Perhaps it is for Al Gore, Michael Mann and James Hansen. What do you think, maybe permanent deportation to Siberia where they can live out their lives with a zero carbon footprint?

The real crime with all of this is that, while our governments still push global warming, the reality is that global cooling may soon be upon us - and the effects could be devastating. Unfortunately, our world will not be able to prepare for this eventuality until the AGW gravy train is brought to its final, bitter end. And given that the global warming scam is not about science, but rather about political power, patronage and money, we will be well into global cooling before that will ever happen.

Update: Linked by Paul in Houston

Sixteen AGW Heretics - "No Need To Panic About Global Warming"

2012-01-30T02:37:00.000-05:00

Earlier in the week, the WSJ published a letter from sixteen distinguished scientists, including among their number William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; and Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne. The letter was directed towards our incoming political class. To sum up the main points:

- carbon dioxide is not a pollutant; - we actually benefit from higher CO2 concentrations;- the IPCC forecasts of global warming are based on failed computer models; - global warming is not a scientific theory as much as a political one, and one not supported by the facts as we know them today; and- even accepting the dire warnings of the IPCC, there is no economic justification for taking action to combat "global warming."

Do read the entire letter.

Sarah Palin: Cannibals in GOP Establishment Employ Tactics of the Left

2012-01-28T04:39:00.000-05:00

Sarah Palin, on her Facebook page, expresses the same disgust and angst that I expressed here regarding the Republican establishments efforts to demonize Gingrich and to "rewrite history." This brutal rebuke from Ms. Palin:

We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent.

We will look back on this week and realize that something changed. . . . [W]hat we have seen in Florida this week is beyond the pale. It was unprecedented in GOP primaries. I’ve seen it before – heck, I lived it before – but not in a GOP primary race.

I am sadly too familiar with these tactics because they were used against the GOP ticket in 2008. The left seeks to single someone out and destroy his or her record and reputation and family using the media as a channel to dump handpicked and half-baked campaign opposition research on the public. The difference in 2008 was that I was largely unknown to the American public, so they had no way of differentiating between the lies and the truth. All of it came at them at once as “facts” about me. But Newt Gingrich is known to us – both the good and the bad.

We know that Newt fought in the trenches during the Reagan Revolution. As Rush Limbaugh pointed out , Newt was among a handful of Republican Congressman who would regularly take to the House floor to defend Reagan at a time when conservatives didn’t have Fox News or talk radio or conservative blogs to give any balance to the liberal mainstream media. Newt actually came at Reagan’s administration “from the right” to remind Americans that freer markets and tougher national defense would win our future. But this week a few handpicked and selectively edited comments which Newt made during his 40-year career were used to claim that Newt was somehow anti-Reagan and isn’t conservative enough to go against the accepted moderate in the primary race. (I know, it makes no sense, and the GOP establishment hopes you won’t stop and think about this nonsense. Mark Levin and others have shown the ridiculousness of this.) To add insult to injury, this “anti-Reagan” claim was made by a candidate who admitted to not even supporting or voting for Reagan. He actually was against the Reagan movement, donated to liberal candidates, and said he didn’t want to go back to the Reagan days. You can’t change history. We know that Newt Gingrich brought the Reagan Revolution into the 1990s. We know it because none other than Nancy Reagan herself announced this when she presented Newt with an award, telling us, “The dramatic movement of 1995 is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century. Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie, and in turn Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.” As Rush and others pointed out, if Nancy Reagan had ever thought that Newt was in any way an opponent of her beloved husband, she would never have even appeared on a stage with him, let alone presented him with an award and said such kind things about him. Nor would Reagan’s son, Michael Reagan, have chosen to endorse Newt in this primary race. There are no two greater keepers of the Reagan legacy than Nancy and Michael Reagan. What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stalin-esque rewriting of history. It was Alinsky tactics at their worst.

But this whole thing isn’t really about Newt Gingrich vs. Mitt Romney. It is about the GOP establishment vs. the Tea Party grassroots and independent Americans who are sick of the politics of personal destruction used now by both parties’ operatives with a complicit media egging it on. In fact, the establishment has been just as dismissive of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Newt is an imperfect vessel for Tea Party support, but in South Carolina the Tea Party chose to get behind him instead of the old guard’s choice. In response, the GOP establishment voices denounced South Carolinian voters with the same vitriol we usually see from the left when they spew hatred at everyday Americans “bitterly clinging” to their faith and their Second Amendment rights. The Tea Party was once again told to sit down and shut up and listen to the “wisdom” of their betters. We were reminded of the litany of Tea Party endorsed candidates in 2010 who didn’t win. Well, here’s a little newsflash to the establishment: without the Tea Party there would have been no historic 2010 victory at all.

I spoke up before the South Carolina primary to urge voters there to keep this primary going because I have great concern about the GOP establishment trying to anoint a candidate without the blessing of the grassroots and all the needed energy and resources we as commonsense constitutional conservatives could bring to the general election in order to defeat President Obama. Now, I respect Governor Romney and his success. But there are serious concerns about his record and whether as a politician he consistently applied conservative principles and how this impacts the agenda moving forward. The questions need answers now. That is why this primary should not be rushed to an end. We need to vet this. Pundits in the Beltway are gleefully proclaiming that this primary race is over after Florida, despite 46 states still not having chimed in. Well, perhaps it’s possible that it will come to a speedy end in just four days; but with these questions left unanswered, it will not have come to a satisfactory conclusion. Without this necessary vetting process, the unanswered question of Governor Romney’s conservative bona fides and the unanswered and false attacks on Newt Gingrich will hang in the air to demoralize many in the electorate. The Tea Party grassroots will certainly feel disenfranchised and disenchanted with the perceived orchestrated outcome from self-proclaimed movers and shakers trying to sew this all up. And, trust me, during the general election, Governor Romney’s statements and record in the private sector will be relentlessly parsed over by the opposition in excruciating detail to frighten off swing voters. This is why we need a fair primary that is not prematurely cut short by the GOP establishment using Alinsky tactics to kneecap Governor Romney’s chief rival.

As I said in my speech in Iowa last September, the challenge of this election is not simply to replace President Obama. The real challenge is who and what we will replace him with. It’s not enough to just change up the uniform. If we don’t change the team and the game plan, we won’t save our country. We truly need sudden and relentless reform in Washington to defend our republic, though it’s becoming clearer that the old guard wants anything but that. That is why we should all be concerned by the tactics employed by the establishment this week. We will not save our country by becoming like the left. And I question whether the GOP establishment would ever employ the same harsh tactics they used on Newt against Obama. I didn’t see it in 2008. Many of these same characters sat on their thumbs in ‘08 and let Obama escape unvetted. Oddly, they’re now using every available microscope and endoscope – along with rewriting history – in attempts to character assassinate anyone challenging their chosen one in their own party’s primary. So, one must ask, who are they really running against?

The Last Refuge Of The Race Hustlers - "Color Blind Racism"

2012-01-27T16:55:00.002-05:00

"Color Blind Racism" was the title of a recent article in the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on-line publication, The Root. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. last appeared on this blog for his outrageous charge of racism against a policeman for following protocol, and The Root was last mentioned on this blog for its list of blacks whom they would like to see erased from history. The list was a who's who of murders, cannibals and despicable people, and included both Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and right wing black politician Alan Keyes.

So what is "color blind racism?" According to The Root, it is "a racial ideology that expresses itself in seemingly nonracial terms. As such, it is most practiced by people who never see themselves outside their own myopic worldview. " What that means in practice is a redefinition of racism from its actual meaning, a belief that a particular race is inherently inferior, into a wholly new arena, where, mirabile dictu, criticism directed towards blacks, and indeed, the mere mention of any inconvenient fact, is inherently racist. The "Orwellian term, 'color blind racism.'" is, as James Taranto at the WSJ describes it, "the pithiest summation we've ever encountered of the absurdity of contemporary left-liberal racial dogma."

According to The Root, "Colorblind racism is the new normal in American conservative political thought." Their exhibit number one, Newt Gingrich calling Obama the "Food stamp President," stating that the black community should be demanding paychecks, not food stamps. The author does gild the lily a bit. He goes on to tell us that the "bloodthirsty" audience actually applauded these remarks, and that Gingrich than followed up with a plan to "force" inner-city youth to work as janitors. The author ultimately concludes that Gingrich is railing against, not the Washington elites, but the "black 'elite'" in the White House. He finishes with the plea that "[v]oters . . . across the nation must demand that Republicans take responsibility for wallowing in a cesspool of race-baiting for political advantage, ever hiding behind a veil of colorblind ignorance and innuendo."

What I did not find in The Root was any article discussing the fact that Obama had, in fact, put more people on food stamps than any other President. Nor did I find any discussion of the fact that Obama's policies, as bad as they are for the economy at large, are having their most destructive impact on blacks - from a rise in black unemployment to over 16%, to the destruction of the black middle class, to a rise in black poverty to over 25%, and to a rise in black youth unemployment to over 50%. So in other words, any attempt by conservatives to actually address the problems of the black community is, ipso facto, racist.

When you see this wholesale redefinition of racism, what you are really seeing are the race hustlers of the left manning the ramparts in a last, desperate defense. I am sure that a portion of the left is so conditioned at this point to view the world through a racial lens that the die hards will buy it. But for everyone else, the race card is becoming ever less effective. The device is obvious, as is the motivation. The only thing the people at the Root care about is protecting their own political power and race based goodies, irrespective of how dire the impact on the black community as a whole.

As an aside, also from the Root, comes this great ad from Mark Oxner, a white Republican Congressional candidate in Florida:

The race hustlers at the Root claim that this ad, portraying Obama as Captain of our ship of state being rowed by children in chains is a "transparent effort to harness racial anxiety." They act as if they own the trademark on the word "slavery" and that any reference to slavery in any context other than referring to enslavement of blacks by whites (and blacks) in pre-Civil War America is inherent racism. The actual history of slavery in the world, including the fact that twice as many white Europeans and white Americans were enslaved by North Africans during the 1600's and 1700's as were blacks brought to America as slaves during that same time period is apparently of no consequence. It helps to be deliberately ignorant of history - a fact I have pointed out about Henry Louis Gates, Jr. before.