I saw a Democrat spinner on TV tonight who said if you don't like $3 per gallon gasoline, vote Democrat. I saw Hilliary on TV the other day discussing her brilliant energy plan. She doesn't want to drill more oil wells or build more nuclear power plants. Instead she wants more government control, more regulation, more conservation, and more research into solar and wind power. I'd say gas wouldn't cost $3 per gallon with Democrats in control; probably more like $5 with Hilliary's plan.

Here is an interesting quiz. See if you differentiate between the thoughts of Al Gore and those of the Unabomber. Those two guys diffinitely have a similar view of what is wrong with the world. Presumably Gore has a different solution than the Unabomber, but I fear he may be vastly more destructive.

http://www.crm114.com/algore/quiz.html

This is an interesting view of why Europe is ignoring the religious war being waged against the West by Islam.

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2006/05/one_smart_brits.html#comments

I think the Democrats in America, with their yearning for European style socialism, react in a similar way to the Europeans, though to a lesser extent. I agree with the author that the longer the West delays a response to the Islamic assault, the worse the carnage will be. It is Hitler phenomena again: if Hitler had been dealt with earlier millions of live would have been saved. If we don't deal with the Islamists before they gain strength, then the loss of life will be unprecedented. I'm afraid Democrats, who will probably be in control of the government after 2008, will wait until after several of our cities have been destroyed by nuclear weapons. The military response to that will be swift and terrible. We should all be praying that George Bush's approach is successful. I fear that when Bush and Blair leave office the new leaders will prattle on about the virtues of multiculturism and will go off the offensive while the Muslims prepare for their next strike.

There must be more to the William Jefferson story than we have learned so far. As I recall there have already been two people who admitted bribing Jefferson several months ago, and it has been reported that the FBI has a video of Jefferson receiving a $100,000 payment, ostensibly a bribe, though no doubt Jefferson has some implausible innocent explanation for the payment. The FBI has obviously moved slowly, leading to the supposition that they are after something larger than a crooked congressman; after all, there are a lot of them. From the reaction of Congress to the FBI raid on Jefferson's office, they must also think something else is afoot. Jefferson was involved with African trade. Could he have been involved with Joe Wilson? Or, could he have been somehow involved in the Iraqi "oil for food" scheme? I wonder how many other Congressmen are involved. I'll bet that most of his buddies are Democrats, but the Press won't pick up on that. In fact, one newspaper has already mis-identified Jefferson as a Republican!

The purpose of the so-called 911 Commission appears to have been to deflect blame from the Clinton Administration for all of the mistakes made in dealing with terrorists, such as treating terrorists attacks as criminal matters rather than treating them properly as war. This article about Clinton's support of Al Queda during the 1990's, even though Al Queda, with support of Iraq, had conducted the first WTC attack in 1993.

http://strata-sphere.com/blog/

There has to be explanation for the bizarre behavior of Sandy Berger in stealing and destroying classified documents. I don't know if this is it, but it could be.

The Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame leak story is a truly ridiculous affair with a Special Prosecutor who has gone off the rails. Rather than finding out who leaked Valerie's name, which was apparently not a crime, Fitz seems to have been appointed to "get" Karl Rove and damage the Bush administration. Joe Wilson seems to be at the center of this charade, so it is interesting to investigate him. This article explains him to some extent.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1256475/posts

He is a Francophile (no surprise there) who likes to marry women in the spy business; his second wife was a French spy. He is a buddy of Al Gore, and apparently does business with a lot of Arabs, including Osama bin Laden's nephew. He seems to be completely untrustworthy.

I went and renewed my driver's license this morning. I had to show my social security card to renew the driver's license. I didn't have any trouble with the eye test. I don't know if showing the social security card was because of the illegal alien thing or not. I don't recall having to do that before. The guys in line with me were interesting. The first guy was an Oriental who spoke English pretty well. They told him he would have to produce a valid visa to get a license. The lady at the desk went and got some info for him on where to go to get the visa. The next guy was black. They told him he had a suspended license in another state (I guess they could determine that from the SS No.), and he had to clear that up before he could get a license in Texas. They provided him with info on how to proceed. The guy behind me was a very old Vietnamese and couldn't speak much English, but said he was a citizen. I helped him fill out his paperwork. He had his name and address written on a piece of paper. All-in-all the DL bureau appeared to be an efficient operation and the people were much friendler than most would expect from a government bureaucracy.

Back in the 2004 election the Democrats claimed that the Bush Tax Cuts had destroyed the American economy, which was as bad as when Hoover was President, and that the individual States were going to go bankrupt. I just saw that the GPD grew by an amazing 5.3% during the last quarter; so much for the poor economy. The Media, of course, portray this in the most negative light, pointing out that we can't continue at that rate, etc. I also read that most States are running large budget surpluses, and that Texas has just enacted the largest Texas State Tax reduction in history. Were the Democrats honestly wrong, or were they simply lying in an attempt to get people to vote for them. I wonder what Molly Ivin's explanation for this is.

It is interesting to me that one difference in the two American Political parties is that when a Republican is exposed as a scoundrel , he is usually embarrassed and resigns. (Examples are Newt and Tom Delay.) Democrats on the other hand brazen it out, act like they are above the law, and maintain their position. Examples are William Jefferson and William Jefferson Clinton.

Here is an interesting article by Pete DuPont. It details the improvement in air quality, etc. over the past 35 years.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=110008416

When listening to Al Gore's rants, it is well to keep in mind the proclamations of other Gloom and Doomers. According to Paul Ehrlich's prediction we all died back during the 1980's. Young people who were not around back in the 1960's and 1970's should consider the past.

One of the fundamental problems in Muslim nations, particularly Arab nations seems to me to be polagamy. Well-off older men have numerous wives and concubines so there are no women available for the younger poor men. This seems to result in a large pool of young men who are ripe for recruitmant into war against perceived enemies. It seems that China is going to have a similar problem due to the governments attempts to stem population growth by allowing women to only have one child. One result of this policy was widespread abortion of female babies. In some regions in China there are 60 boys out of every 100 babies born, as opposed to the natural rate of about 51 boys. These boys are now reaching maturity. An explosion of some sort would seem to be likely. Countries tend to be warlike when they have an excess of men.

The United States is facing as great a threat now as at any time in the last century. Back in the early 1900's the US was protected by two wide oceans, and other nations of the world did not realize how powerful the US was. Now the US basically has a target on its back. Everyone is gunning for us. The Iranians have been conducting asymmetrical warfare against us since 1979. The Chinese military claims they are conducting "unrestricted" warfare aginst the US. And on top of that our Southern Border is being breached by Mexico. The real problem for us is the political paralysis that has decended on us due to the perfidy of the Democrats, who seem to be willing to sacrifice all to get back at the "evil" George Bush. The situation is not yet hopeless, but is looking bad. We need to get our act together quickly. For example, the Iranians themselves are vulnerable to assymetrical warfare. We could arm the Kurds and turn them loose on Iran. The Shiite Arabs in Southern Iran really don't like the Persians, so we could use Iraq to cause some problems in that region. Regarding the Chinese, they seem to be trying to get control of enough of the oil supply to damage us economically. They can get Russia to line up against us, and are trying to make friends with Iran, Venezula, and other oil producing nations. We could do something about that such as drilling in Alaska and off-shore, and developing more energy sources, such as building safe pebble bed nuclear reactors. We could also use leverage to get Mexico to allow us to develop more of their oil which they seem incpable of doing. After all, we are absorbing much of their population to stave off starvation in Mexico. The present immigration debate in Washington further demonstrates the incompetence of our National government. If the Democrats had another Harry Truman, I'd be for him, since the Republicans would not damage national security as the Democrats have been doing to gain control. But, I don't see a Truman or a Jack Kennedy in the current Democrat leadership. Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Harry Reid, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi and the others just don't measure up.

The United States is facing as great a threat now as at any time in the last century. Back in the early 1900's the US was protected by two wide oceans, and other nations of the world did not realize how powerful the US was. Now the US basically has a target on its back. Everyone is gunning for us. The Iranians have been conducting asymmetrical warfare against us since 1979. The Chinese military claims they are conducting "unrestricted" warfare aginst the US. And on top of that our Southern Border is being breached by Mexico. The real problem for us is the political paralysis that has decended on us due to the perfidy of the Democrats, who seem to be willing to sacrifice all to get back at the "evil" George Bush. The situation is not yet hopeless, but is looking bad. We need to get our act together quickly. For example, the Iranians themselves are vulnerable to assymetrical warfare. We could arm the Kurds and turn them loose on Iran. The Shiite Arabs in Southern Iran really don't like the Persians, so we could use Iraq to cause some problems in that region. Regarding the Chinese, they seem to be trying to get control of enough of the oil supply to damage us economically. They can get Russia to line up against us, and are trying to make friends with Iran, Venezula, and other oil producing nations. We could do something about that such as drilling in Alaska and off-shore, and developing more energy sources, such as building safe pebble bed nuclear reactors. We could also use leverage to get Mexico to allow us to develop more of their oil which they seem incpable of doing. After all, we are absorbing much of their population to stave off starvation in Mexico. The present immigration debate in Washington further demonstrates the incompetence of our National government. If the Democrats had another Harry Truman, I'd be for him, since the Republicans would not damage national security as the Democrats have been doing to gain control. But, I don't see a Truman or a Jack Kennedy in the current Democrat leadership. Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Harry Reid, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi and the others just don't measure up.

I don't understand the issue about giving Social Security retirement payments to illegal aliens. My understanding is that a person must be a US citizen or have a green card to get a social security account. If an illegal alien has a social security card he must have lied somehow to get it. Based on what I read, a lot of the illegal aliens gain employment by using someone else's social security number, or simply have a fake number. (It is not clear why the Social Security Administration would not be aware that funds were being creditied to a fake account number.) My question is, how does the government identify illegal aliens and determine how much an illegal alien paid into someone else's account, or to fake accounts? A person has to pay into social secuity for at least 10 years in order to be eligible for retirement payments; surely even incompetent government organizations could identify the illegal person within 10 years. Perhaps the government bureaucrats just aren't interested in actually doing anything about the illegal aliens.

Ray Nagin, the incompetent mayor of New Orleans, has been re-elected. Apparently his constituents were impressed by his "Standing up to President Bush," which seems to me to have been counter-productive. The people deserve what they get when they put incompetents into office. I hope the ridiculous demands for aid of Lousiana Politicians are ignored. I don't think we should encourage people to live below sea level near the Gulf of Mexico.

Yesterday in the Ft. Worth Star Telegram there was a story stating that the "Bush" tax cuts have resulted in massive budget deficits. I wonder how they can be certain of that. Tax revenues have increased by $500 Billion over the last two years. Would that increase have happened if there had been no income tax reduction? Or, was the revenue increase due to economic growth resulting from the tax change? Maybe, since after the first George Bush's tax increase and the Clinton tax increase, tax revenues actually declined. The balanced budget forced on Clinton by a Republican Congress was the result of reduced spending as opposed to increased tax revenue. The Democrats seem more interested in equalizing income than in raising revenue. They always talk about "fairness" in taxes, and oppose tax cuts. This is curious since, under the current tax schedule, the rich pay a higher porportion of the income tax revenue than ever before.

Today the Ft. Worth Star Telegram ran a story about the Keller School District removing the words "In God We Trust" from a depiction of the Jefferson Nickle on the cover of the School Yearbook. The reason for the Keller School District's action was to avoid offending anyone. Well, they failed because I am offended. Of course, in this age of "Political Correctness" it is perfectly acceptable to offend elderly white Christian males such as myself. I feel certain the the ACLU (an organization founded by a communist) will sue to remove "In God We Trust" from American money.

Regarding Global Warming, my crude analyses of the impact of a doubling of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would increase the average temperature on Earth by only one or two degrees Fahrenheit. I think most would agree with that analysis with regard to the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide alone. The Global Circulation Models that show significantly more temperature increase have some additional "forcing," which means that there is assumed to be more water vapor in the atmosphere. (The alarmists usually identify carbon dioxide as the primary greenhouse gas, with methane as the second most important. They seem to not want to confuse people with the information that 95% of the grenhouse effect comes from water vapor.) Some of the models also show more clouds at night, reducing radiation to space, and fewer clouds in the daytime resulting in less reflection of sunlight. It is interesting that it is usually acknowledged that the GCM's are not good at predicting the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, and are really bad at predicting cloud action. Here is an interesting article from the anti-green blog that dicusses the reason that there is a limit to how much additional heat can be absorbed by carbon dioxide, which is absorbs energy in narrow wavelengths.

NATURE DOES IT AGAIN: CLIMATE SENSITIVITY AND NONSENSICAL EDITORIAL POLICIESClimate sensitivity is defined as the average increase of the temperature of the Earth that you get (or expect) by doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere - from 0.028% in the pre-industrial era to the future value of 0.056% (expected around 2100). If you assume no feedback mechanisms and you just compute how much additional energy in the form of infrared rays emitted by (or reflected from) the surface will be absorbed by the carbon dioxide (refresh your knowledge about Earth's energy budget), you obtain the value of 1 Celsius degree for the climate sensitivity.While the feedback mechanisms may shift the sensitivity in either direction, Prof. Richard Lindzen of MIT, a world's leader in the sensitivity issue, will convince you that the estimate is about right but the true value, with the mostly unknown feedback mechanisms, is likely to be lower. Why is it so?You should realize that the carbon dioxide only absorbs the infrared radiation at certain frequencies, and it can only absorb the maximum of 100% of the radiation at these frequencies. By this comment, I want to point out that the "forcing" - the expected additive shift of the terrestrial equilibrium temperature - is not a linear function of the carbon dioxide concentration. Instead, the additional greenhouse effect becomes increasingly unimportant as the concentration increases: the expected temperature increase is something like* 1.5 ( 1 - exp[-(concentration-280)/200 ppm] ) CelsiusThe decreasing exponential tells you how much radiation at the critical frequencies is able to penetrate through the carbon dioxide and leave the planet. The numbers in the formula above are not completely accurate and the precise exponential form is not quite robust either but the qualitative message is reliable. When the concentration increases, additional CO2 becomes less and less important.In particular, there exists nothing such as a "runaway effect" or a "point of no return" or a "tipping point" or any of the similar hysterical fairy-tales promoted by various Al Gores. The formula above simply does not allow you more than 1.5 Celsius degrees of warming from the CO2 greenhouse effect. Similar formulae based on the Arrhenius' law predicts a decrease of the derivative "d Temperature / d Concentration" to be a power law - not exponential decrease - but it is still a decrease.One might also want to obtain a better formula by integrating the formula above over frequencies:see http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/05/climate-sensitivity-and-editorial.htmlIn all cases, such a possible warming distributed over centuries is certainly nothing that a person with IQ above 80 should be producing movies about.When you substitute the concentration of 560 ppm (parts per million), you obtain something like 1 Celsius degree increase relatively to the pre-industrial era. But even if you plug in the current concentration of 380 ppm, you obtain about 0.76 Celsius degrees of "global warming". Although we have only completed about 40% of the proverbial CO2 doubling, we have already achieved about 75% of the warming effect that is expected from such a doubling: the difference is a result of the exponentially suppressed influence of the growing carbon dioxide concentration.In reality, the increase of the temperatures since the pre-industrial era was comparable or slightly smaller than 0.76 Celsius degrees - something like 0.6 Celsius degrees. It is consistent to assume that the no-feedback "college physics" calculation of the CO2 greenhouse effect is approximately right, and if it is not quite right, it is more likely to be an overestimate rather than an underestimate, given the observed data.The numbers and calculations above are actually not too controversial. Gavin Schmidt, a well-known alarmist from RealClimate, more or less agrees with the calculated figures, even though he adds a certain amount of fog - he selectively constructs various minor arguments that have the capacity to "tilt" the calculation above in the alarmist direction. But the figure of 1 Celsius degree - understood as a rough estimate - seems to be consistent with everything and Schmidt claims that only intellectually challenged climate scientists estimate the sensitivity to be around 5 Celsius degrees (I forgot Schmidt's exact wording).Three weeks ago, Hegerl et al. have published a text in Nature that claims that the 95 percent confidence interval for the climate sensitivity is between 1.5 and 6.2 Celsius degrees. James Annan decided to publish a reply (with J.C. Hargreaves). As you might know, James Annan - who likes to gamble and to make bets about the global warming - is* an alarmist who believes all kinds of crazy things about the dangerous global warming;* a weird advocate of the Bayesian probabilistic reasoning.However, he decided to publish a reply saying that* the actual sensitivity is about 5 times smaller than the Hegerl et al. upper bound -- which means that the warming from the carbon dioxide won't be too interesting;* Hegerl et al. have made errors in statistical reasoning; the error may be summarized as an application of Bayesian priors which are unscientific.The second point means that Hegerl et al. simply use a "prior" (a dogma or a random religious preconception that is a crucial part of the Bayesian statistical reasoning) that simply allows the sensitivity to be huge a priori - and such a huge preconception is then not removed by the subsequent procedure of "Bayesian inference". Such an outcome is a typical result of Bayesian methods: garbage in, garbage out. I am convinced that the fact that Annan was able to appreciate these incorrect points of Hegerl et al. is partially a result of my educational influence on James Annan.Nevertheless, Annan's reply was rejected by Nicki Stevens of Nature without review with the following cute justification:"We have regretfully decided that publication of this comment as a Brief Communication Arising is not justified, as the concerns you have raised apply more generally to a widespread methodological approach, and not solely to the Hegerl et al. paper."In other words, Annan's reply could have the ability to catch errors that influence more than one paper, and such replies are not welcome. Imagine that Nicki Stevens is the editor of "Annals der Physik" instead of Max Planck who received Albert Einstein's paper on special relativity. Even better, you can also imagine that Nicki Stevens is the editor who receives the paper on General Relativity whose insights apply more generally. ;-)When we apply my reasoning more generally to a widespread methodological approach, we could also wonder whether the person named Nicki Stevens realized that one half of the internet was going to discuss how unusually dumb she was.

There was another interesting study released recently that showed that the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere has not increased recently. I'll try to find that one also.

Should President Bush respond to Ahmadinejad's letter? The Democrats like the letter since it incorporates a lot of their "talking points." But, why should we have a discussion about our treatment of terrorists with the leader of a nation that has recently hanged two men for being homosexual and a 14-year old girl for "sassing" a judge. The letter basically says we must become Moslems or we will have no peace. As many of the Moslem terrorists say, there is nothing to negotiate; they just want to kill us. Based on the Moslem custom the letter should be interpreted as a Declaration of War. I think Bush should respond that we interpret the letter as a Declaration of War, and that if that is incorrect, Ahmadinejad should respond with another letter confirming that he respects our belief in freedom of religion, and that he renounces his oft repeated desires for our destruction. Democrats like for people to apoligize, so Bush might also request an apology for occupying our Embassy in 1979.

Energy independence for America requires government action that is probably not politically possible at present. The real issue is not energy so much as fuel for transportation. Petroleum is the cheapest form of transportation fuel available at present. From a purely economic perspective oil will remain the primary fuel until it becomes so scarce that the cost of oil exceeds the cost of alternatives. (Even at $70 per barrel, oil is probably still the cheapest transportation fuel source now.) At present most (65%) of the oil used by the US is imported, and comes from areas of the World that are politically unstable. The supplier nations are increasingly using the oil supply as a policy weapon. Thus from a national security perspective it may be desirable for the US to develop more domestic energy production to reduce the dependence of foreign oil. One obvious solution is to exploit more domestic petroleum sources. The US has undeveloped sources that are about equal to the reserves of Saudi Arabia. But drilling in the far north or in coastal areas is vehemently opposed by Democrats and militant environmentalists. (It seems likey to me that Democatic opposition will recede when they regain the Presidency.) Democrats make the specious claim that developing new oil fields or developing approaches for extracting oil from oil shale takes a lot of time, which is true, and so will not help, which is not true. Building more nuclear power plants would help some, but would also take several years to do, and Democrats and militant environmentalists are opposed. Democrats favor conservation, without acknowleding that significant reductions in energy consumption will also take a long time. An approach that seems to be politically possible is to use ethanol for tranportation fuel rather than gasoline. This has the support of farmers (who enjoy a subsidy from the government). Environmentalists seem to like it since it does not add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Flexible fuel engines that can run on either ethanol or gasoline are available. (A pure ethanol fuel is not practical, but a fuel that is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline is practical.) The US currently consumes about 400 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel per day. It would require almost all of the arable land in America to raise sufficient corn to make enough ethanol to satisfy the US demand for transportation fuel. Sugarcane is a better source for ethanol than corn, but in the US there is only a little land (which is along the Gulf Coast) suitable for raising sugarcane. The US could import ethanol from friendly countries in the Western Hemisphere, but this is not true independence.

So what should the US do? What is the long range solution, since it is likely that petroleum will become more scarce. It seems to me that we should start drilling to develop new oilfields immediately. (Cuba is drilling off the coast of Florida, so why shouldn't the US?) We will need the oil for the transition period to alternative fuel sources. We should also start building nuclear power plants . At some point in the future I expect that there will be a lot of electric cars on the road. One problem with these vehicles is limited range (maybe 100 to 150 miles), and slow recharge. It is hard to imagine service stations where depleted batteries are exchanged for charged batteries, though I suppose it is possible. More than likely families will have two autos, one battery powered for short trips around town, and one with an internal combustion engine to be used on longer trips. It could be that in some areas of the country a family would have only electric vehicles, and would rent one with an internal combustion engine for longer trips. Much more electric power would be required to recharge these electric vehicles. Renewable sources could be used, such as solar power and wind power. Both of these sources are intermittent, so some sort storage system or a base power system to augment them would be necessary. Nuclear power is obviously one solution. Reduction in energy needs through conservation is desirable, but does not happen quickly. It is not economically feasible to simply replace all of the motors, buildings, and gas guzzling automobles immediately. The transition to alternate fuel sources will take several years. Republicans would like to let the market dictate which systems will ultimately prevail. This is an approach that is often messy but does work. Democrats would like to impose solutions through central planning. This approach is generally used in collectivist (socialist and communist) nations, and has not been very successful.

Congress is worried about the Exectutive Branch grabbing power. Congress is all exited because NSA is acquiring records of telephone calls for use in combating terrorists. The same data that the phone companies now record, and sometimes sell to commercial interests. It seems to me that Congress should be more concerned about the Judiciary. A Federal Judge in Oakland is deciding if the test required for graduation from high school in California is discriminatory because students who can't speak English or who are unable to do eighth grade math fail the test. The Lawyer for the students says they should not be penalized because the state failed to teach them. (It seems that to Liberals, everything is society's fault.) In my opinion the Judge should not have allowed this suit in the first place. A high school diploma is meaningless if it doesn't represent at least some minimal level of competence. Why should a Federal Judge be the one who decides who has demonstrated the educational level necessary to graduate from high school. In another case a Fedral Judge has ordered a company not to inquire as to the alien status of its employees, which is a violation of Federal Law. Judges (and Lawyers) need to be knocked down a peg ot two.

I suppose everyone has noticed that totalitarian leftists in the US seem to be supporting the totalitarian Islamists. The reason for this is because both of these groups are opposed to classical liberalism which advocates individual liberty. Both leftists and Islamists want the community interests to have precedence over individual rights. In America the Conservatives are champions of individual liberty while in Europe it seems that those who favor individual pre-eminance are called classical liberals.

Health in America

This past week there was an article in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram comparing the health of middle class people in the US compared with people in the UK. The study indicated that those in the US have much higher rates of chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease than people in the UK; this despite the fact that spending on health care is twice as high in the US as in the UK. The article stated that experts were unable to explain the study results.

This reminded me of the time Peter Jennings was puzzled about why there more people than ever in prison in the US, since crime was at an all-time low. It never occurred to a good liberal like Jennings that crime was down because more of the criminals were out of circulation.

It seems to me that diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease can be treated and controlled, but usually are not cured. Thus, if more people in the US have these conditions, then it is not surprizing that more money is spent on health care in the US. Another factor could be that, since socialized medicine in the UK rations health care, it is possible that a larger percentage of the population there have undiagnosed medical conditions. Another possibility is that, since the raw data were generated by each nation's governments, it is possible that there were significant differences in the protocols and methodologies used.

PlameGate

I have been trying to figure out what Special Prosecutor (Persecutor) Patrick Fitzgerald's charter actually is. As I understand it, his actual charter has never been divulged. In the press it was stated that he was to investigate who revealed that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA agent. There seems to be some considerable doubt as to whether or not revealing her as a CIA agent was a crime. Fitzgerald has said that it was not his job to determine if a crime was committed, but rather it was to do an ivestigation. It seems odd to me, a non-lawyer, that there should be millions of dollars spent on an investigation if there was no crime in the first place. It seem to me that he was on a "witch hunt" from the beginning. There was a lot of commentary that it would not be the crime, but the "cover-up" that would result in prosecution. But, how can there be a "cover-up" if there was no crime? Scooter Libby has been indicted for lying to the grand jury based on testimony of reporters who had spoken separately with Libby. One wonders why the testimony of the reporters is any more credible than that of Libby? From news reports it appears that Fitzgerald's investigation was targeted at Karl Rove. How can it be that his charter was to investigate a person, rather than a crime? That's against the law in America I thought.

Regarding Valerie Plame Wilson, Fitzgerald claims he knows who first "outed" her, but he doesn't want to embarrass that person by making an identification. That person is reportedly not in the White House. It appears that Fitzgeald's job was to embarrass the Bush Administration.

SPORTS ARE SHOWBIZ

On the Golf channel some of the commentators were lamenting that the teen-aged Michelle Wie was paid around $1 million to play in a Man's Tournament in Korea, while the top male Korean golfer was paid only $200,000 for appearing. That the winner of the tournament will receive only $100,000 is quite revealing. Whether purests like it or not, professional golf is in the Entertainment business. The people who can draw crowds to the event will be paid the big money, not the best players. This is not at all surprising; for example, does anyone think Tom Cruise is the best actor in Hollywood?