RadioActive with Steve Mitton: March 2010

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Obama to allow oil drilling off Virginia coast

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a reversal of a long-standing ban on most offshore drilling, President Barack Obama is allowing oil drilling 50 miles off Virginia's shorelines. At the same time, he is rejecting some new drilling sites that had been planned in Alaska.

Obama's plan offers few concessions to environmentalists, who have been strident in their opposition to more oil platforms off the nation's shores. Hinted at for months, the plan modifies a ban that for more than 20 years has limited drilling along coastal areas other than the Gulf of Mexico.

Obama was set to announce the new drilling policy Wednesday at Andrews air base in Maryland. White House officials pitched the changes as ways to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil and create jobs - both politically popular ideas - but the president's decisions also could help secure support for a climate change bill languishing in Congress.

The president, joined by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, also was set to announce that proposed leases in Alaska's Bristol Bay would be canceled. The Interior Department also planned to reverse last year's decision to open up parts of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Instead, scientists would study the sites to see if they're suitable to future leases.

Obama is allowing an expansion in Alaska's Cook Inlet to go forward. The plan also would leave in place the moratorium on drilling off the West Coast.

In addition, the Interior Department has prepared a plan to add drilling platforms in the eastern Gulf of Mexico if Congress allows that moratorium to expire. Lawmakers in 2008 allowed a similar moratorium to expire; at the time President George W. Bush lifted the ban, which opened the door to Obama's change in policy.

Under Obama's plan, drilling could take place 125 miles from Florida's Gulf coastline if lawmakers allow the moratorium to expire. Drilling already takes place in western and central areas in the Gulf of Mexico.

The president's team has been busy on energy policy and Obama talked about it in his State of the Union address. During that speech, he said he wanted the United States to build a new generation of nuclear power plans and invest in biofuel and coal technologies.

Rapid Rise in US Budget Deficit Projection

Many Americans know the deficit has exploded this year. What may be less well-known is that the problem is not confined to this year or next, but stretches out at least a decade and represents a historic, multi-trillion-dollar change in the country's fiscal fortunes.

CNBC, working with the Congressional Budget Office, found that the 10-year outlook for the nation's deficit has deteriorated by almost $8 trillion. In effect, every man, woman and child in the United States has taken on an extra $25,000 in debt, CNBC has learned.

Comparing the CBO's outlook in 2008 to the current forecast, CNBC found that what was once a projected $247 billion surplus for the years 2009 through 2018, is now an estimated $7.4 trillion deficit.

What caused it? According to the CBO, 57 percent of the increase was caused by the decline in revenues, of which a vast majority resulted from the agency’s outlook for the economy.

Specifically, Social Security accounts for a huge part of the revenue change. According to the network's analysis, Social Security was expected to show a $2.3 trillion surplus over the 10-year period from 2009-2018. However, new figures show that if a surplus for the agency will exist at all, it is projected to be just over $1 trillion.

Adding to the deterioration is a range of expenses and methodology, including the stimulus bill, a change in accounting for the war, extended unemployment benefits and additional interest on debt.

Barry and Bibi Back-Story

For some reason quite unclear, the Obama Administration's foreign policy establishment decided to make a major issue out of the announcement during VP Biden's visit to Israel of new settlement construction in East Jerusalem. As analysts searched for an explanation of the White House's well-publicized contest with Prime Minister Netanyahu during the latter's recent U.S. trip, more and more the focus was drawn to matters unrelated to the settlement issue.

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth was used by insiders in the Netanyahu entourage to be quoted as saying Obama's views were a "strategic disaster." While most people assumed the quote related to the settlement matter, it was actually aimed at a more serious and immediate concern. The settlements could have been passed off as unfortunate timing. More importantly, according to the former Israeli UN ambassador Dan Gillerman, development in East Jerusalem has never been considered by Netanyahu and Israel's right wing as part of the settlement phase of "land for peace."

Biden had been briefed on this; Obama had been briefed on this; Hillary Clinton had been briefed. The real story is that the Obama Administration is proceeding on the basis that evolving a Palestine/Israel accord will be an important element in negotiations with Iran to cease nuclear weapon development.

This fantastical idea has evolved out of the strong White House belief that Iran can be cajoled into an agreement on nuclear weapon development if only the Palestine "problem" was solved. Any action appearing to inhibit the current campaign to bring Israel and Palestine closer is perceived by President Barack Obama as contrary to his plan to prevent Iran from "going nuclear." Contrary to the oft-stated theme of keeping the military option on the table, the Obama Administration is committed to avoiding a preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear development targets.

Westboro Baptist Church members picketed the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who died in Iraq in 2006.

(CNN) -- The father of a Marine whose funeral was picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church says an order to pay the protesters' legal costs in a civil claim is nothing less than a "slap in the face."

"By the court making this decision, they're not only telling me that they're taking their side, but I have to pay them money to do this to more soldiers and their families," said Albert Snyder, whose son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, was killed in action in Iraq in 2006.

Members of the fundamentalist church based in Topeka, Kansas, appeared outside Snyder's funeral in 2006 in Westminster, Maryland, carrying signs reading "You're going to hell," "God hates you" and "Thank God for dead soldiers."

Among the teachings of the church, which was founded in 1955 by pastor Fred Phelps, is the belief that God is punishing the United States for "the sin of homosexuality" through events such as soldiers' deaths.

Margie Phelps, the daughter of Fred Phelps and the attorney representing the church in its appeals, also said the money that the church receives from Snyder will be used to finance demonstrations. But she also said that the order was a consequence of his decision to sue the church over the demonstration.

"Mr. Snyder and his attorneys have engaged the legal system; there are some rules to that legal engagement," said Phelps, a member of Westboro who says she has participated in more than 150 protests of military funerals.

"They wanted to shut down the picketing so now they're going to finance it," she said.

Prudential to take $100M health care charge in 1Q

NEW YORK — Insurer Prudential Financial Inc. said Monday that it will take a $100 million charge in the first quarter in relation to the recent health care overhaul legislation.

The life insurance and annuities provider said in a regulatory filing that it will take the charge against earnings in the first quarter.

Prudential joins a growing list of companies that have said they will take accounting charges because of the health care bills. AT&T said last week it would take a $1 billion charge in the first quarter. AK Steel Corp., 3M Co., Caterpillar Inc., Deere & Co. and Valero Energy have also said they would take smaller charges.

Prudential said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the health bill signed into law by President Barack Obama last week and a companion measure he is expected to sign Tuesday will reduce its tax deduction for retiree health care costs beginning in 2013.

Companies that provide prescription drug benefits for retirees have been getting subsidies covering 28 percent of eligible costs but could deduct everything they spent on the benefits — including the federal money — from their taxable income.

Companies Push to Repeal Provision of Health Law

An association representing 300 large corporations urged President Obama and Congress on Monday to repeal a provision of the health care overhaul that prompted AT&T, Caterpillar and other companies to announce substantial charges for the current quarter.

Luke Sharrett/The New York Times

Representative Henry Waxman criticized the charges by large companies, saying the health reform would save them money.

Times Topic: Health Care Reform

The association, the American Benefits Council, said the provision — which reduces the tax deductions for companies with drug coverage for their retired employees — would deal a significant blow to corporate profits and would discourage companies from hiring more workers.

AT&T announced last week that it was taking a $1 billion charge because of the provision. Deere & Company announced a $150 million charge, Caterpillar a $100 million charge, and 3M a $90 million charge.

Many companies said they were taking these charges now, before the current quarter ended, to comply with accounting rules. But some corporate critics asserted that the companies’ rapid response to the health legislation was aimed at pressing the administration to repeal the provision.

James A. Klein, the president of the American Benefits Council, called the provision “a serious mistake that is having negative and unintended consequences.”

White House officials defended the provision, saying it was a deliberate effort to eliminate what they said was an unusually generous tax loophole.

Supreme Court Weighs Free-Speech Rights

Larry Stickney speaks passionately as he tries to explain why the names of people who signed a 2009 Washington state ballot measure against gay rights should be kept secret.

Photo: High court mulls speech rights and more

Larry Stickney, campaign manager for Protect Marriage Washington speaks to reporters in this Nov....

Larry Stickney, campaign manager for Protect Marriage Washington speaks to reporters in this Nov. 2009 file photo, in Everett, Wash. Stickney speaks passionately as he tries to explain why the names of people who signed a 2009 Washington state ballot measure against gay rights should be kept secret.

(Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)

"I had been in the political game for 16 years, but we had no idea the viciousness that we would come under," says Stickney, a former state legislative aide, active opponent of abortion rights and campaign manager for Protect Marriage Washington, who now is involved in a major free-speech case that will come before the U.S. Supreme Court next month.

In Defense of Sarah Palin

Nothing annoys certain of my fellow conservative intellectuals more than when I remind them, as on occasion I mischievously do, that the derogatory things they say about Sarah Palin are uncannily similar to what many of their forebears once said about Ronald Reagan.

It's hard to imagine now, but 31 years ago, when I first announced that I was supporting Reagan in his bid for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination, I was routinely asked by friends on the right how I could possibly associate myself with this "airhead," this B movie star, who was not only stupid but incompetent. They readily acknowledged that his political views were on the whole close to ours, but the embarrassing primitivism with which he expressed them only served, they said, to undermine their credibility. In any case, his base was so narrow that he had no chance of rescuing us from the disastrous administration of Jimmy Carter.

Now I knew Ronald Reagan, and Sarah Palin is no Ronald Reagan. Then again, the first time I met Reagan all he talked about was the money he had saved the taxpayers as governor of California by changing the size of the folders used for storing the state's files. So nonplussed was I by the delight he showed at this great achievement that I came close to thinking that my friends were right and that I had made a mistake in supporting him. Ultimately, of course, we all wound up regarding him as a great man, but in 1979 none of us would have dreamed that this would be how we would feel only a few years later.

Associated PressWhat I am trying to say is not that Sarah Palin would necessarily make a great president but that the criteria by which she is being judged by her conservative critics—never mind the deranged hatred she inspires on the left—tell us next to nothing about the kind of president she would make.

Take, for example, foreign policy. True, she seems to know very little about international affairs, but expertise in this area is no guarantee of wise leadership. After all, her rival for the vice presidency, who in some sense knows a great deal, was wrong on almost every major issue that arose in the 30 years he spent in the Senate.

What she does know—and in this respect, she does resemble Reagan—is that the United States has been a force for good in the world, which is more than Barack Obama, whose IQ is no doubt higher than hers, has yet to learn. Jimmy Carter also has a high IQ, which did not prevent him from becoming one of the worst presidents in American history, and so does Bill Clinton, which did not prevent him from befouling the presidential nest.

The Gulf Stream does not appear to be slowing down, say US scientists who have used satellites to monitor tell-tale changes in the height of the sea.

Confirming work by other scientists using different methodologies, they found dramatic short-term variability but no longer-term trend.

A slow-down - dramatised in the movie The Day After Tomorrow - is projected by some models of climate change.

The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The stream is a key process in the climate of western Europe, bringing heat northwards from the tropics and keeping countries such as the UK 4-6C warmer than they would otherwise be.

It forms part of a larger movement of water, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is itself one component of the global thermohaline system of currents.

Between 2002 and 2009, the team says, there was no trend discernible - just a lot of variability on short timescales.

The Atlantic overturning circulation is still an important player in today's climate

Josh Willis, Nasa

The satellite record going back to 1993 did suggest a small increase in flow, although the researchers cannot be sure it is significant.

"The changes we're seeing in overturning strength are probably part of a natural cycle," said Josh Willis from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.

As Democrats, after a Sunday rally on the Capitol grounds, marched to the House hand-in-hand to vote for health-care reform, tea partiers reportedly shouted the "N-word" at John Lewis and another black congressman. A third was allegedly spat upon. And Barney Frank was called a nasty name.

Tea partiers deny it all. And neither audio nor video of this alleged incident has been produced, though TV cameras and voice recorders were everywhere on the Hill.

Other Democrats say their offices were vandalized and they've been threatened. A few received, and eagerly played for cable TV, obscene phone calls they got.

If true, this is crude and inexcusable behavior. And any threat should be investigated. But Democrats are also exploiting these real, imaginary or hoked-up slurs to portray themselves as political martyrs and to smear opponents as racists and bigots.

This is the politics of desperation.

The best tea-party signs ever -- compiled in a striking book with foreword by Chuck Norris: "Don't Tread on US! Signs of a 21st Century Political Awakening"

Majority Whip James Clyburn accuses Republicans of "aiding and abetting ... terrorism." New York Times columnist Frank Rich compared the tea-party treatment of Democrats to Nazi treatment of the Jews during Kristallnacht:

"How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn't recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht."

Kristallnacht, "Crystal Night," the "Night of Broken Glass," was the worst pogrom in Germany since the Middle Ages. Synagogues were torched and hundreds of businesses smashed. Shattered glass covered the streets. Women were assaulted and men beaten and murdered. After that terrible night, half the Jews remaining in Germany fled.

To compare a brick tossed through the window of a congressional office and two shouted slurs to Kristallnacht suggests a growing paranoia on the left about the populist right.

Not since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made "some Americans run off the rails," said Rich, have we seen anything like this.

Was Rich awake in 1964? Because it wasn't the right that went off the rails. The really big riot in 1964 was in Harlem, lasting five days, with 500 injured and as many arrested. The Watts riot in 1965, Detroit and Newark in 1967, Washington, D.C., and 100 other cities in 1968, all bringing troops into American cities, were not the work of George Wallace populists or Barry Goldwater conservatives. They were the work of folks who went "all the way with LBJ."

Frank Rich spent many years as the theater critic for the New York Times, where, at worst, his venom could cause a Broadway production or two to close down.

Now, however, Mr. Rich opines on political and social issues for the Times, and, while the results are usually mildly amusing (even if unintentionally so), his reach has grown a bit, so the damage he causes can travel beyond the footlights. I’m not sure why anyone turns to Rich for political analysis—heck, you might as well read the rantings of a TV game show host—but the Gray Lady continues to pay him for his weekly column, and, at the rate she’s bleeding money, that’s no small sacrifice.

Anyway, Mr. Rich has apparently been able to get to the bottom of the vocal opposition to the “healthcare reform” bill that was recently gently shepherded through Congress.

It turns out, according to his well-crafted analysis, that it’s not the bill that’s got people in an uproar; rather, what we’re facing is the death rattle of a dwindling cadre of white, racist, sexist, homophobic males terrified by the ascent of people of color, women and gays.

CNSNews.com Rep. Burgess: Government Can Force Us to Buy General Motors Products If Obamacare Mandate Upheld in Court

(CNSNews.com) – Representative Michael Burgess (R-Texas) told CNSNews.com that if the mandate in the health care law requiring individuals to purchase health insurance or be penalized is upheld by the courts, the federal government could mandate anything, such as requiring all Americans to purchase a General Motors car.

On Capitol Hill, CNSNews.com asked Representative Burgess, “The Congressional Budget Office has said that never before in the history of the United States has the federal government mandated that any one buy a specific good or service and, of course, the bill includes the individual mandate. Is there a part of the Constitution that you think gives Congress the authority to mandate individuals to purchase health insurance?”

Representative Burgess, himself a doctor, said, “No, I personally do not, and I think that is exactly right. Never before in the history of this country have we had the ability to coerce American citizens to purchase something and then invoke the Commerce clause after we coerce that purchase.”

“It just flies in the face of what a free society should be, so I’m perfectly comfortable with the attorneys general bringing suit against this bill,” said Burgess. “I think it’s the appropriate thing to do. Plus, you also have the equal-protection business of some states being more equal than others and, really, it should be equals among equals, not some states getting special deals to buy off a vote to get the bill passed.”

When Virginia Delegate Kirkland Cox, R-Colonial Heights, set up the “Tax Me More Fund” in 2002, he did it to make a point: Those complaining the most loudly about spending “cuts” in Richmond could put their own money where their mouth was and make a voluntary contribution to the state.

Last year - to supplement a $74 billion 2008-10 biennial state budget – they did just that. Total collected: $1,500, according to the Virginia Department of Taxation.

Students want ‘Our Lord' phrase off diplomas

A group of students at Trinity University is lobbying trustees to drop a reference to “Our Lord” on their diplomas, arguing it does not respect the diversity of religions on campus.

“A diploma is a very personal item, and people want to proudly display it in their offices and homes,” said Sidra Qureshi, president of Trinity Diversity Connection. “By having the phrase ‘In the Year of Our Lord,' it is directly referencing Jesus Christ, and not everyone believes in Jesus Christ.”

Qureshi, who is Muslim, has led the charge to tweak the wording, winning support from student government and a campus commencement committee. Trustees are expected to consider the students' request at a May board meeting.

Other students and President Dennis Ahlburg have defended the wording, arguing that references to the school's Presbyterian roots are appropriate and unobtrusive.

Founded by Presbyterians in 1869, Trinity has been governed by an independent board of trustees since 1969 but maintains a “covenant relationship” with the church.

“Any cultural reference, even if it is religious, our first instinct should not be to remove it, but to accept it and tolerate it,” said Brendan McNamara, president of the College Republicans.

McNamara pointed out that Trinity displays other signs of its Christian heritage, including a chapel on campus, a chaplain, Christmas vespers and a Bible etching on the Trinity seal.

“Once you remove that phrase, where do you draw the line?” McNamara asked.

TUCSON, Ariz. (970 WFLA) - The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) became the first medical society to sue to overturn the newly enacted health care bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). AAPS sued Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (AAPS v. Sebelius et al.).

“If the PPACA goes unchallenged, then it spells the end of freedom in medicine as we know it,” observed Jane Orient, M.D., the Executive Director of AAPS. “Courts should not allow this massive intrusion into the practice of medicine and the rights of patients.”

“There will be a dire shortage of physicians if the PPACA becomes effective and is not overturned by the courts.”

The PPACA requires most Americans to buy government-approved insurance starting in 2014, or face stiff penalties. Insurance company executives will be enriched by this requirement, but the AAPS says it violates the Fifth Amendment protection against the government forcing one person to pay cash to another. AAPS is the first to assert this important constitutional claim.

The PPACA also violates the Tenth Amendment, the Commerce Clause, and the provisions authorizing taxation, the AAPS says. The Taxing and Spending power cannot be invoked, as the premiums go to private insurance companies. The traditional sovereignty of the States over the practice of medicine is destroyed by the PPACA.

A former member of Congress says last weekend's shooting death of an Arizona rancher on his own land is what will happen more and more unless America takes back its own borders – even as President Obama makes promises that ultimately could reward those who break federal laws to gain entrance to the U.S.

Former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., now chairman of the Rocky Mountain Federation and co-chairman of TeamAmericaPac, told WND today, "Janet Napolitano lied and Rob Krentz died."

He was referring to police reports in Arizona that said Krentz was found shot to death late Saturday on the Arizona ranch that had been run by his family for more than 100 years. Officers are investigating it as a homicide and believe he was shot with a 9mm gun allegedly stolen from a nearby ranch. He had radioed to his brother a reference to an illegal alien on his property before his radio went silent.

"I believe this," Tancredo told WND. "Every single person who has worked so hard to keep those borders open, the president, in Congress and at every level of government – these people have blood on their hands."

Obama's latest promises on immigration came as Congress passed his unprecedented takeover of health care – the effective nationalization of some 17 percent of the nation's economy.

(Story continues below)

"I have always pledged to be your partner as we work to fix our broken immigration system, and that's a commitment I reaffirm today," he said in a video message to open-borders supporters rallying in Washington the same day Congress approved "Obamacare."

Read the details how the next election could be stolen, using amnesty, universal registration and a consolidated power grab!

Tancredo had been en route to the border area to visit Krentz and others who have been dealing first-hand with the impact of smuggling – both human and drugs – from Mexico across their land.

He said details about Krentz's death remain sketchy, but the underlying cause of such violence isn't a surprise to him.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano insists U.S. borders are secure, Tancredo said, but "the violence in Arizona is beginning to reach the level of some states in Mexico."

"The violence is here. Our borders are not secure, they can never be secure unless you have the military there," he said.

Tancredo said Democrats view illegal aliens as votes, and too many Republicans see the illegals as cheap laborers.

But he argued national boundaries are there for a reason, as are federal requirements to obtain immigration documentation through proper procedures. The consequences of not enforcing those laws are harsh, he warned.

"We will suffer, and people will die," he said.

Border-enforcement advocates such as Vision America fear legislation that could grant a "path to citizenship" for millions of people who have broken federal law to enter the U.S.

"The system 'broke' when Washington stopped enforcing our immigration laws and winked at millions of illegals that streamed across our borders every year," the group said. "Now, the president would 'fix' the problem by [making] millions of border-jumpers into citizens who doubtless will return the favor by becoming Democratic voters."

Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., proposed legislation that apparently included amnesty. However, Graham suddenly dropped his support, saying instead that Obama should produce a bill and bring it before Congress if he wants the issue addressed.

Vision America said amnesty is critical to the Obama administration, because the "left is desperately in need of new voters who will march in lockstep to the drumbeat of big government. That's why they're eager to legalize an estimated 11 million illegal aliens (8 million of them potential voters), bestow citizenship on them and get them to the polls."

Tancredo said he has "no doubt whatsoever" that Obama's next agenda item will be amnesty.

"Don't forget, Barack Obama will do anything – anything – in order to make this country a better place in his socialist system," Tancredo said.

President Obama's reported pick to run Medicare and Medicaid, Donald Berwick, has argued for a "radical transfer of power" in the health industry and claimed patients' quality of care in the U.S. medical system is currently measured by the "color of their skin," WND has learned.

The Financial Times and other news organizations yesterday quoted an administration official stating Obama intends to nominate Berwick to take the helm of the largest medical payer in the nation – the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The news emerged as the White House announced it had sidestepped Senate confirmations by appointing 15 nominees to administration positions, including a controversial top lawyer for two U.S. labor unions.

Berwick, president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, has been widely recognized as one of the most sought-after experts on health-care quality. In 2005, Modern Healthcare, a leading industry publication, named Berwick the third most powerful person in American medicine.

Read the best of those tea party signs that have been appearing across the country as citizens try to get their messsage through to Washington!

At a 2008 Families USA conference speech documented by Health Beat, a healthcare industry blog, Berwick slammed the U.S. health-care system as "bloated" and "broken."

Well-known Douglas-area rancher is found slain

A longtime rancher was killed on his Douglas-area property over the weekend, and neighbors worried that his homicide was connected to increasing border-related crime in the area.

The Cochise County Sheriff's Office offered little information into the late-Saturday shooting death of 58-year-old Robert Krentz, whose family began the Krentz Ranch more than 100 years ago.

Krentz's body was found on his land, which is about 35 miles northeast of Douglas, just before midnight Saturday, said Carol Capas, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff's Office.

The Sheriff's Office, aided by the U.S. Border Patrol, had no suspects Sunday and continued to follow leads, Capas said. She declined to comment on reports from neighbors and border activists that Krentz's death was related to smuggling in the area.

Area residents said Krentz had no enemies, and they could think of no motive for his death other than the possibility it was related to what they called the growing level of crime in the area related to illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.

Tom Tancredo, a former U.S. representative from Colorado, was visiting ranchers near Douglas to discuss border issues when he heard of Krentz's death.

Tancredo said he and Krentz were friends and that he was "a mild-mannered guy" who was known for providing illegal immigrants with food and water.

Tancredo and Chris Simcox, co-founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, said Krentz phoned a family member Saturday afternoon to say he was out near his watering hole, providing one or more illegal immigrants with aid.

That's the last his family heard from him, Simcox and Tancredo said.

"He looked the other way so often," Tancredo said. "It's so ironic that he, of all people, got murdered."

The glacier on Germany's Zuspitz mountain is covered up in summer Photo: DPA

Germans are losing their fear of climate change, according to a survey, with just 42 percent worried about global warming.

It seems the long and chilly winter has taken its toll on climate change sensibilities despite the fact that weather has nothing to do with climate.

The latest figure is a clear drop from the 62 percent of Germans who said they were scared of such changes just in autumn 2006.

The new survey, carried out by polling company Infratest for Der Spiegel magazine, showed a quarter of those questioned thought Germany would profit from climate change rather than be badly affected by it.

Many people have little faith in the information and prognosis of climate researchers with a third questioned in the survey not giving them much credence. This is thought to be largely due to mistakes and exaggerations recently discovered in a report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, the IPCC.

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. - Anyone need a $500 million, 355-foot steel tower for launching rockets into space?

There's one available at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Brand new, never been used.

The mobile launcher has been built for a rocket called the Ares 1. The problem is, there is not yet any such thing as an Ares 1 rocket — and if the Obama administration has its way, there never will be.

Story continues below ↓

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President Obama's 2011 budget kills that rocket, along with the rest of NASA's Constellation program, the ambitious back-to-the-moon effort initiated under President George W. Bush.

People here were shocked when they heard the news last month. They were already facing the imminent retirement of the aging space shuttle, and the likelihood of thousands of layoffs in the contracting corps but many hoped to find a Constellation job, stay on site and essentially just switch badges.

Now suddenly, they're looking at no shuttle, no Ares 1, no NASA-owned spaceship of any kind in the near future. American astronauts for years to come will hitch rides to space on Russian rockets.

"It's almost like losing manned space flight," said Michele Kosiba, 44, a quality inspector for United Space Alliance.

http://luckybogey.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/obamacare.jpg

Come 2014, we might begin to see help-wanted ads that emphasize the lack of employer-provided insurance, especially for modest wage-earners.

It's known that ObamaCare redistributes from the rich to modest earners. Less well understood is how much the generous subsidies benefit some modest earners over others. The health care law creates incentives for employers and employees to shift away from job-based health care, leading some to predict cost overruns.

Consider a family of four with income equal to 150% of the poverty level, or $36,000 in 2016, that does not get employer-based insurance. Under ObamaCare that family could see a boost of roughly $11,000 in compensation relative to a family with $36,000 worth of compensation via wages and employer-based health coverage. (This is a ballpark figure. The Congressional Budget Office has yet to update past analyses for slight changes to the final legislation.)

Why such a dramatic difference for those of similar means? Due to a lack of funds to spread around, the law's monetary rewards are reserved for those who don't get coverage via an employer. Those subsidies, which include health care premiums and support for additional out-of-pocket costs, would amount to about $16,000, far above the value of the tax subsidies for employer-provided care.

How the Left Fakes the Hate: A Primer

After years of covering racial hoaxes on college campuses and victim sob stories in the public arena, I’ve encountered countless opportunists who live by that demented mindset. At best, the fakers are desperately seeking 15 minutes of infamy. At worst, their aim is the criminalization of political dissent.

Upon decimating the deliberative process to hand President Obama a health-care “reform” victory, unpopular Beltway Democrats and their media water-carriers now claim there’s a tea-party epidemic of racism, harassment, and violence against them.

On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a tepid, obligatory statement against smearing all conservatives as national-security threats. But her lieutenants had already emptied their tar buckets. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Chris Van Hollen accused Republican leaders of “stoking the flames.” Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn accused the GOP of “aiding and abetting” what he called “terrorism.”

Yet, the claims that tea-party activists shouted “nigger” at black House Democrats remain uncorroborated. The coffin reportedly left outside Missouri Democratic congressman Russ Carnahan’s home was used in a prayer vigil by pro-life activists in St. Louis who were protesting the phony Demcare abortion-funding ban in Obama’s deal-cutting executive order. Videotape of a supposed intentional-spitting incident targeting Missouri Democratic congressman Emanuel Cleaver at the Capitol shows no such thing. Cleaver himself backed off the claim a few days later. He described his heckler to the Washington Post in more passive terms as “the man who allowed his saliva to hit my face.” Slovenliness equals terrorism!

Who owns you? The risk of ‘unlimited submission’

Hear ye, hear ye:

“Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principles of unlimited submission to their General Government; ... that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force...”

Do you agree?

Or do you think it is crazy for states and individuals to reject unlimited submission to the federal government?

Certainly, in the wake of a new law that orders American citizens to surrender their right to make their own decisions about the most personal of matters — their health and well-being — it is no surprise that many states have indeed risen up to protest against what appears to be an unconstitutional seizure of power by Congress.

But the words quoted above are not the latest resolution to come out of some “right-wing wacko” tea party convention, as MSNBC would put it. They are instead the words of the Founding Father who wrote the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson.

In the days since the enactment of their health care plan, Democrats in Washington have been desperately seeking to lodge the new program in the pantheon of American public-policy achievements. House Democratic whip James Clyburn compared the bill to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Vice President Biden argued it vindicates a century of health reform efforts by Democrats and Republicans alike. House speaker Nancy Pelosi said “health insurance reform will stand alongside Social Security and Medicare in the annals of American history.”

Even putting aside the fact that Social Security and Medicare are going broke and taking the rest of the government with them, these frantic forced analogies are preposterous. The new law is a ghastly mess, which began as a badly misguided technocratic pipe dream and was then degraded into ruinous incoherence by the madcap process of its enactment.

The appeals to history are understandable, however, because the Democrats know that the law is also exceedingly vulnerable to a wholesale repeal effort: Its major provisions do not take effect for four years, yet in the interim it is likely to begin wreaking havoc with the health care sector—raising insurance premiums, health care costs, and public anxieties. If those major provisions do take effect, moreover, the true costs of the program will soon become clear, and its unsustainable structure will grow painfully obvious. So, to protect it from an angry public and from Republicans armed with alternatives, the new law must be made to seem thoroughly established and utterly irrevocable—a fact on the ground that must be lived with; tweaked, if necessary, at the edges, but at its core politically untouchable.

Why Revenge Is Necessary

Every member of Congress who is not a liberal ideologue or from a wildly leftist district who voted for Obamacare on Sunday should be haunted and hounded by and for their vote for as long as they draw breath upon this good Earth. And the same is true for every liberal ideologue who actively crafted and pushed the corrupt and unrepublican (small "r") procedures and flagrant lies that were used to cram Obamacare up our gullets from the nether end of our common polity.

Before we consider the proper shape and degree of the hounding and haunting, let us be reminded of why this legislation is an atrocity of epic proportions.

Let us start with all the lies that Barack Obama told or the promises that he broke, each one of which will damage our way of life as the falsehood is made manifest in law.

This president, this sinister creature of Frank Marshall Davis and Saul Alinsky, of Indonesian sojourns and Columbia University radical salons, campaigned vociferously against Hillary Clinton's call for an individual mandate for health insurance. Now the individual mandate is the centerpiece of Obamacare.

Obama promised that he would never, ever raise taxes on individuals making under $200,000 or couples under $250,000. This legislation breaks that promise.

Obama said the bill would not provide public funding of abortions. It does provide such funding.

He said it would cause average premiums to drop by $2,500 annually. Premiums instead will rise. He said he would not tax health-care benefits. This bill does tax them. He said his plan wouldn't lead to rationing. It actually does far worse than mere rationing: It provides for death panels by proxy.

The pitched battle over health care has unleashed a rash of vandalism and attacks directed at politicians, with at least 10 House Democrats reporting death threats or incidents of harassment or vandalism at their district offices over the past week.

More than 100 House Democrats met behind closed doors Wednesday afternoon with representatives of the FBI and the U.S. Capitol Police. The lawmakers voiced what one senior aide who was present described as "serious concern" about their security in Washington and in their home districts when they return this weekend for the spring recess.

Usually only the congressional leadership has regular personal protection from the Capitol Police. But at least 10 lawmakers have been offered increased protection by law enforcement agencies, said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.).

Asked whether members are endangered, Hoyer said: "Yes. [There are] very serious incidents that have occurred."

Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance Gainer e-mailed senators and staffers Wednesday telling them to "remain vigilant." Gainer, a former Capitol Police chief, said in an interview that the warning was meant to "assuage people's fears."

But House Democrats say they are unnerved.

"Our democracy is about participation," Hoyer said. "Our democracy is about differing and debate and animated debate and passionate debate. But it is not about violence."

The vandalism began last weekend, when the House debated the health bill for final passage. In Wichita, someone broke the window of a county Democratic Party headquarters with a brick that had "No to Obama" and "No ObamyCare" written on it. Lyndsey Stauble, executive director of the Sedgwick County Democratic Party, said she went to work Saturday morning to clean up the shattered glass around her desk.

"It was surprising and alarming to know that people, when they have so many opportunities for expression in this country, that somebody would resort to a brick," Stauble said.

Over the next 24 hours, thrown bricks shattered the glass doors and windows of party headquarters from Rochester, N.Y., to Cincinnati. A propane gas line at the Charlottesville home of Rep. Tom Perriello's brother was severed Tuesday after a self-identified "tea party" activist posted what he believed to be the Virginia Democrat's address on a Web site and urged opponents to "drop by" to convey their opposition to his yes vote on the health bill.

A brick was thrown through the Niagara Falls district office of Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.), who also received a threatening voice-mail message referring to sniper attacks. The front door to the Tucson district office of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shattered. And Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), whose last-minute negotiations to bar federal funding of abortion helped secure the bill's passage, received a fax with a drawing of a noose and an anonymous voice mail saying: "You're dead. We know where you live. We'll get you."

In Washington on Wednesday, the attacks were roundly condemned, with some congressional leaders wondering whether the long fight over health care had unleashed an ugly dimension to the modern political discourse.

"If we fail to learn the lessons of our history, we are bound to repeat them," said House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.). "I think all of us learned some great lessons from the '60s and '70s, and there are some lessons that none of us want to repeat, but one thing we know, as Steny Hoyer said, 'Silence is consent.' "

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) called the incidents unacceptable.

President Obama's top aides huddled yesterday with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic committee leaders to map out a strategy for cobbling together 60 votes on a comprehensive energy and climate change bill once lawmakers return next month from their spring break.

The hour-long meeting in Reid's office included White House legislative affairs director Phil Schiliro and Obama's energy and climate adviser, Carol Browner. According to a Senate Democratic leadership aide, the Obama officials pledged to work with the committee leaders once Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) release their bill next month.

Reid (D-Nev.) encouraged the Senate committee leaders to give "constructive comments and suggestions within a few weeks of when they get text," the aide said. Several of the senators in the room expressed hope that additional GOP senators beyond Graham would soon start to publicly support and engage in the legislative process.

"The leader feels before he brings up a bill he wants to know he's got a shot at getting it through," Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said before the meeting in Reid's office.

Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said afterward that he appreciated the White House officials' presence in the room. "I like that," he said. "I like the fact they were in there. And I think people in essence were very frank because they were there."

"The first thing, of course, is to see what their bill says," said Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.).

Green Meanies

Green Meanie.jpg

Let's say I ride my green ten-speed bicycle to work tomorrow morning rather than drive my third generation Toyota Prius. Does that give me the right to steal your liverwurst sandwich from the office fridge?

Well, that depends on whether I stop by the farmer's market on the way home.

(Stay with me. This will all hopefully make sense in a few paragraphs.)

You see, stealing liverwurst sandwiches is just one example of how ordinary rules don't apply to green consumers. For years we have been reading stories about "Gulfstream Liberals" who leave muddy carbon footprints the size of a small African nation all over our global living room floor. Who can forget the 2007 report that Al Gore's vast Nashville plantation consumed 20 times the energy of the average home, or the stories about eco-activist Laurie David's jaunts in her private jet between her east and west coast mansions, (not to mention her citation by the Chilmark Conservation Commission for paving over protected wetlands on her Martha's Vineyard estate)?

It turns out these are not organic cherry-picked examples of eco-hypocrisy. This is Green standard operating procedure, according to a piece titled, "Do Green Products Make Us Better People?" in my new issue of Psychological Science. University of Toronto researchers Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong found that while Greens may sport a "halo of green consumerism," it is only to conceal their horns of self-interest.

The researchers asked about 150 subjects to play computer games in which they could increase their money by cheating and lying about it. Mazar and Zhong found that the greener shoppers were more likely to cheat, lie, and steal than conventional consumers. Later, subjects were told to take their spoils from an envelope based on the honor system. Again, Greens were six times as likely to take more than they earned. Finally, subjects played a game where they were asked to share money with another player. You guessed it: Green shoppers shared fewer dollars than conventional shoppers.

Barack Obama has long seen the U.S. Constitution as an obstacle to what he considers progress. In a 2001 interview that surfaced during the presidential campaign, he made this very clear: the Supreme Court under Justice Earl Warren had failed to break "free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution," Obama mused on a radio show.

The Warren Court was insufficiently radical, he said, conceding too much ground to the traditional interpreters of the Constitution as a "charter of negative liberties," which "says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf."

The Founding Fathers, he implied, produced a defective document, much too passive in its understanding of government's possibilities. The founders had set up a form of government to protect liberty; he clearly wished they had formed a government to enact equality.

The hubristic character of Obamacare derives in large part from this view. Obama measures progress not by adherence to the Constitution but by its abolition. He wants not a "charter of negative liberties," but a Leviathan, which he calls a "living" Constitution, that swallows them up in the pursuit of egalitarianism.

Tuesday's smug speeches euphemistically revolved around this theme. What "makes us the United States of America," Obama essentially said, is the "scale" of government's ambitions. One would have thought the Constitution "makes us the United States of America." No, it is that politicians are willing to flout the real Constitution for the sake of "hope and change" that makes America great.

The Short Way to a Single-Payer System

I have been asked by readers what the worst-case scenario could be after the passage of the health-care bill. Obviously, we know that the changes in the bill will cost much more than predicted. The result will be more taxes, or more debt, or more money printed (which will turn into inflation), or very likely a mix of the three. Either way, this is a fiscal train wreck.

As if that's not bad enough, much worse can happen. As we know, unintended consequences are real, and they always lead to a worse situation that any of us expected. Another way to say this is, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." For instance, the health-care bill is supposed to extend health-care coverage to everyone. Those who don't have it will have to pay a penalty.

The unintended consequence is the following: How long will it take for people, individuals and businesses, to realize that they are better off not getting health care and paying the penalty? They can just get insurance once they need it, since people who are sick can no longer be denied health-care coverage.

A few weeks before Congress passed a law that orders every American to buy health insurance, the Virginia legislature passed a law that says "no resident of this Commonwealth…shall be required to obtain or maintain a policy of individual insurance coverage." Two weeks later, Idaho’s governor signed a law that declares "every person within the state of Idaho is and shall be free to choose or decline to choose any mode of securing health care services without penalty."

Supporters of ObamaCare say such legislation, which more than 30 other states are considering, has no force, since the Constitution makes congressional enactments "the supreme law of the land." But that is true only when federal laws are authorized by the Constitution, and the individual health insurance mandate is not.

The mandate's defenders say Congress is exercising its power to "regulate commerce…among the several states." Yet a law that compels people to engage in an intrastate transaction plainly does not fit within the original understanding of the Commerce Clause, which was aimed at facilitating the interstate exchange of goods by removing internal trade barriers.

Even a Commerce Clause stretched by seven decades of deferential Supreme Court rulings is not wide enough to cover the failure to buy insurance, a noneconomic inactivity. The two cases that led to the Court's broadest readings of the Commerce Clause both involved production of a fungible commodity for which there was an interstate market regulated by Congress.

In the first case, decided in 1942, the Court ruled that a farmer could be penalized for exceeding federal crop limits aimed at controlling supply and boosting prices even though all of the extra wheat he grew was consumed on his farm. The Court reasoned that homegrown wheat "exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce" by reducing the total amount of wheat sold.

Welfare Un-Reform

The Dole: In urging Congress to extend jobless benefits again, the White House warned that unemployment could remain high through the year. Benefits may be part of the problem.

In a joint statement to Congress, the president's top economic advisers hedged against expectations of lower unemployment this year, saying the jobless rate — still hovering around 10% — will "remain elevated for an extended period."

"We do not expect further declines in unemployment this year," the White House budget director, top economist and Treasury secretary testified.

What's got them so pessimistic? Possibly an abnormally high job vacancy rate.

Normally the job vacancy rate goes down after a recession, as the job market stabilizes. But January, the latest reported month, showed an 11% spike in unfilled jobs. Vacancies are now at 2.1% — the highest since February 2009, the Labor Department says.

That means people are not taking jobs as expected at this point in the recovery. Why? Because many don't have to — thanks in part to 99 weeks and counting of unemployment benefits.

Add to that record food stamp payments and other welfare, and the unemployed have been perversely incentivized to keep holding out for better jobs, rather than take less-than-desirable or lower-paying ones. Forty percent of jobless Americans have been out of work for at least 27 weeks — the highest level since the government began keeping records in the 1940s.

"Those programs subsidize unemployment," University of Chicago economist Robert Shimer says. "There could be good reasons to do it, but we should be clear on the cost. It has a pretty substantial impact."

Gap in health care law's protection for children

WASHINGTON — Hours after President Barack Obama signed historic health care legislation, a potential problem emerged. Administration officials are now scrambling to fix a gap in highly touted benefits for children.

Obama made better coverage for children a centerpiece of his health care remake, but it turns out the letter of the law provided a less-than-complete guarantee that kids with health problems would not be shut out of coverage.

Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday.

However, if a child is accepted for coverage, or is already covered, the insurer cannot exclude payment for treating a particular illness, as sometimes happens now. For example, if a child has asthma, the insurance company cannot write a policy that excludes that condition from coverage. The new safeguard will be in place later this year.

Full protection for children would not come until 2014, said Kate Cyrul, a spokeswoman for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, another panel that authored the legislation. That's the same year when insurance companies could no longer deny coverage to any person on account of health problems.

Obama's public statements have conveyed the impression that the new protections for kids were more sweeping and straightforward.

"This is a patient's bill of rights on steroids," the president said Friday at George Mason University in Virginia. "Starting this year, thousands of uninsured Americans with pre-existing conditions will be able to purchase health insurance, some for the very first time. Starting this year, insurance companies will be banned forever from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions."

First: Congratulations to President Obama and the Democratic leadership. You won dirty against bipartisan opposition from both Congress and the majority of Americans. You've definitely polarized the country even more, and quite possibly bankrupted us too. But hey, you won. Bubbly for everyone.

Simply, you have nationalized healthcare by proxy. Insurance companies are now heavily regulated government contractors. Way to get big business out of Washington! They will clear a small, government-approved profit on top of their government-approved fees. Then, when healthcare costs rise -- and they will -- Democrats will insist, yet again, that the profit motive is to blame and out from this Obamacare Trojan horse will pour another army of liberals demanding a more honest version of single-payer.

The Obama administration has turned the insurance industry into the Blackwater of socialized medicine.

That's always what Obama had in mind. During the now-legendary healthcare summit, Obama, who loves to talk about "risk pools," "competition," "consumer choice" and the like, let it slip that he actually doesn't believe in insurance as commonly understood. The notion that Americans should buy the healthcare "equivalent of Acme Insurance that I had for my car" seemed preposterous to him. "I'm buying that to protect me from some catastrophic situation," he explained. "Otherwise, I'm just paying out of pocket. I don't go to the doctor. I don't get preventive care. There are a whole bunch of things I just do without. But if I get hit by a truck, maybe I don't go bankrupt." Apparently, people are just too stupid to go to the doctor -- or maintain their homes -- if they have to pay much of anything out of pocket.

The endgame was to get the young and healthy to buy more expensive insurance than they need or want. "Expanding the risk pool" and "spreading out the risk" by mandating -- i.e., forcing -- young people to buy insurance is just market-based spin for socialist ends. A risk pool is an actuarial device where a lot of people pay a small sum to cover themselves against a "rainy day" problem that will affect only a few people. Such "peace of mind" health insurance is gone. What we have now is health assurance. With health assurance, there are no "risk pools" really, only payment plans.

Dynamic Concepts co-founder Pedro Alfonso, with employees Chris Gunn, left, Ron Watkins, Gabrielle Alfonso, Michael Peasant and Virginia Newton, says he faces a lot of thinking about how the health care overhaul will affect his firm.

About as far as you can mosey from the health care reform heat of Washington, D.C., sits Avogadro's Number, a quirky sub shop in Fort Collins, Colo., where you get a free veggie sub on Mondays for each one you buy.

That freebie sub is darned important at a time when folks are pinching pennies. So, too, is health care reform.

As far as shop owner Rob Osborne is concerned, the historic health care reform package that President Obama plans to sign into law Tuesday, is a lot like Osborne's sub sandwiches: A little bit of this. A little bit of that. And, in the end, made to look digestible.

So Osborne is holding his nose and is willing to bite — even swallow — health care reform, even though he suspects it's going to hurt his shop's bottom line, and he may have to raise prices.

"My feeling is: No action is worse than some action," says Osborne, 55, who has owned the shop for 30 years that employs 35 workers to whom he does not provide health care. "In principle, people should have health care. They've got to take a stab at it somewhere. But from a practical standpoint, I don't really know what's going on."

WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU: Fight rages to define health care bill to public

TAXPAYERS: How health care overhaul affects you

ASK AN EXPERT: Health care bill should help small business

That comment — not understanding what health care reform really means to a business — seems the common reaction from small-business owners. In a nation of more than 29.6 million small businesses with about 58 million employees, it seems less a matter of being for it or against it and more a matter of not understanding what it means for them.

(CNSNews.com) - Proponents of human-caused global warming claim that "cognitive" brain function prevents conservatives from accepting the science that says "climate change" is an imminent threat to planet Earth and its inhabitants.

George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley and author of the book "The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist's Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics," says his scientific research shows that how one perceives the world depends on one’s bodily experience and how one functions in the everyday world. Reason is shaped by the body, he says.

Lakoff told CNSNews.com that “metaphors” shape a person's understanding of the world, along with one’s values and political beliefs -- including what they think about global warming.

"It relates directly (to global warming) because conservatives tend to feel that the free market should be unregulated and (that) environmental regulations are immoral and wrong," Lakoff said.

"And what they try to do is show that the science is wrong and that the argument is wrong, based on the science. So when it comes back to science, they try to debunk the science," Lakoff said.

On the other hand, he added, liberals' cognitive process allows them to be "open-minded."

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Conventional wisdom is that the health care process was so ugly and unpopular that members of Congress would be loath to take up other political hot potatoes in an election year. This line of thinking couldn't be more wrong.

While no one can predict what's going to happen in the November elections, it's not looking good for Democrats. In addition to the traditional midterm curse of the party in power, Democrats will be faced with an energized conservative base and the antagonized independent voters who helped elect Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

Hurt by President Obama's partisanship, Nancy Pelosi's strong-arm tactics, the failed $787 billion stimulus package, the House vote for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill and now the unpopular health care bill with all its related shenanigans, Democrats could easily lose their large majorities in Congress.

Since there may be no tomorrow — that is, 2011 — for a Democrat-controlled Congress, time is of the essence for the Obama agenda of transforming America into a socialist paradise.

The take-home lesson from the health care circus for Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership is that anything goes so long as it works. In correcting the record about her Louisiana Purchase — it was worth $300 million not a mere $100 million — Sen. Mary Landrieu showed that no political pay-off is too embarrassing.

Keep the cell door shut: Appeal a judge's outrageous ruling to free 9/11 thug Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/03/24/2010-03-24_ke

It is shocking and true: A federal judge has ordered the release of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, one of the top recruiters for the 9/11 attacks - a man once deemed the highest-value detainee at Guantanamo Bay.

With but a two-sentence ruling, Washington Federal Judge James Robertson has taken the dangerous folly of granting enemy combatants entree into civilian courts to its outrageous, indecent limit. Who's next, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed?

So that there is no mistake: Robertson's determination that a terrorist with the blood of 3,000 on his hands deserves life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not the work of President Obama. It is the work of a Supreme Court that gave Guantanamo detainees the right to challenge their confinement before federal judges.

That said, Slahi is one of several hundred detainees who have remained in legal limbo, affording the courts the opportunity to run haywire, while the Obama administration had dithered and zigged and zagged over whether to try them in civilian courts or before military tribunals - or whether to simply hold them indefinitely.

Slahi might well have been a fit candidate for the hole, he possibly being a man whose guilt was certain but unprovable beyond a reasonable doubt thanks to squeamishness over evidence acquired under rough treatment. No doubt he was squeezed appropriately hard after 9/11, and for that the United States is safer.

And for that, apparently, Robertson believes Slahi deserves a pass. He promises to release the basis for his decision after it is declassified by the intelligence community.

That's not good enough. What was the rush to release? The judge could have waited, should have waited, for the country to understand why this had to happen before exercising his legal authority. Indeed, the Obama administration is considering whether to appeal the ruling, according to a Justice Department spokesman.

It must appeal.

CNSNews.com Health Care Legislation: Here Come the Lawsuits

(CNSNews.com) – The American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative civil liberties group, says it is preparing to file a federal lawsuit challenging the “flawed” health care package that passed the House 219-212 on Sunday night.

The law “fails the American people and does not provide permanent protections for the life of the unborn,” the group said in a Sunday night news release.

The ACLJ said it would file a lawsuit “soon” in federal court, challenging the forced mandate that penalizes Americans who choose not to participate in universal health care. “That is unconstitutional, and we believe ultimately it will be overturned by the courts,” it said.

“The fact remains that the actual health care bill just approved does fund abortion,” ACLJ said.

“Those self-proclaimed pro-life Democrats put their trust in an executive order -- subject to being rescinded by the president -- a move that is not only short-sighted but does not provide the guarantees and pro-life protections secured by statutory language in a law approved by Congress.”

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Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott will challenge health care legislation as unconstitutional

On the steps of the U.S Capitol March 21, 2010.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced on March 22, 2010, the State will be joining other states in challenging the health-care reform legislation that passed in the U.S. House last night 219-212.

"The federal health care legislation passed tonight violates the United States Constitution and unconstitutionally infringes upon Texans' individual liberties," said Abbott.

"To protect all Texans' constitutional rights, preserve the constitutional framework intended by our nation's founders, and defend our state from further infringement by the federal government, the State of Texas and other states will legally challenge the federal health care legislation," Abbott announced.

Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's office also confirmed they will file suit against the federal government indicating the health-care reform legislation is unconstitutional.

As a Canadian, I am fully aware of how presumably rational and literate people can elect utter poltroons, nullities, and incompetents to political office. The Liberal prime minister from 1921-1930 and 1935-1948, William Lyon Mackenzie King, thought Hitler “might become one of the saviors of the world” and that “Kristallnacht might turn out to be a blessing.” When he was not busy turning away Jewish-German refugees from our shores, he was regularly communing with the spirits of his departed mother, Leonardo da Vinci, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and his beloved Irish Terriers (all, with the exception of one, named Pat). As poet Frank Scott wrote in a piece titled “W.L.M.K.,” “Let us raise a temple/To the cult of mediocrity.”

Naturally, we didn’t stop there. We put Liberal Pierre Trudeau into the PM’s seat largely because he seemed “cool” and wore sandals; Trudeau then proceeded to massively inflate the national debt, impoverish (and estrange) the oil-producing province of Alberta with an energy tax grab, clumsily attempt to repatriate the Constitution thus abetting the secessionist impetus in Quebec, and cozy up to Fidel Castro. Conservative PM Joe Clark couldn’t count properly and saw his government defeated during a crucial vote for lack of a sufficient number of members in the House. Conservative Brian Mulroney suffered from poor judgment in his choice of colleagues and a tendency to insouciant avarice that later landed him in hot water. Liberal Jean Chrétien, who liked to style himself as “the little guy from Shawinigan,” was really a cunning ignoramus who knew how to feather his nest and cling to power but nearly lost the country during the great referendum debate of 1995. Liberal Paul Martin couldn’t stop waving his arms during campaign speeches like a puppet gone berserk and pulverized the country with his numbingly repeated “Let me be clear,” which he rarely was. He lasted two years and change. (Interesting material can be gleaned from Canadian historian Michael Bliss’ Right Honourable Men.)

I have also bemusedly observed a succession of American presidents whom I would have been loath to invite to my supper table. One had to resign for approving a raid on rival headquarters. One thought we were about to enter a “new world order,” betokening his complete ignorance of history and human psychology. Another seemed to believe that the Oval Office was meant to double as a bordello, a man plainly devoid of moral standards but adroit at the practice of “triangulation.” This is the same man who signed the Motor-Voter bill into law that clogged the voter rolls with ineligibles, leading to gross ballot fraud and fostering still more ACORN corruption. His Republican successor succumbed to the drag-effect of his inept subordinates, stoked the national deficit, believed democracy was synonymous with elections and could be exported to cultures with no historical ground in which democratic principles could reliably take root, and during his second term turned his administration into a holding company for the Democrats.