Recently I've read that Europeans are saying that man-for-man their soldiers are better than America's. That may well be true, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean much. Back in the time of Ceasar the Franks were probably better man-for-man than the Romans, but the better organized Roman armies regularly thrashed the Franks in battle (at least when the Romans were lead by military professionals rather than political hacks). And, it is generally thought that the German soldiers were better than the Americans in WWII. But, the Germans only won their first battle with Americans at Kasserine Pass. After that the Germans were shut out. (And, for those who cite the movie "A Bridge too Far," that was a British operation with only some limited American support that was emphasized in the movie.) Besides, it seems unlikely that European armies will ever actually fight anyone these days since their politicians are predisposed to just give up, so what difference does it make anyway.

The left wing journalists here do not seem impressed by the recent failed terrorists attacks in England and Scotland. They also deride suggestions that AQ is behind the attacks. Of course, in Scotland the terrorists were shouting "Allah," but that was probably just to confuse us. Alan Colmes points out that we have no proof this was conducted by Islamists, so shouldn't anger them by accusing them. They have not said much about it, but authorities in Britain appear to have known attacks were coming, and had issued warnings. That in itself would suggest Islamists were behind it, since those are the guys being watched. But, the Liberal's World view is that the war on terror is a "bumper sticker." They probably would like to blame the attacks on "radical right wing Evangelicals;" maybe those crazy Baptists.

In Michael Moore's latest propaganda movie which I haven't seen, but according to reviewers shows an American man with two fingers cut off; Doctors want $12,000 to re-attach his ring finger and $60,000 to re-attach his middle finger. The movie raves about the excellent health care in Cuba. If a Cuban sugar cane worker had two fingers cut off, does anyone think he would get them re-attached? Cuba is a typical communist country that has a two-tier system; an excellent one for foreigners and Cuban Communist elites, and one that is not good for the rest of the people. I seem to recall that when Castro was seriously ill recently, he got a Doctor from Spain to care for him. It seems unlikely to me that if President Bush got sick that he would need a Doctor from another country.

There are indications that Al Gore is going to run for President again. He is clearing his calendar for the nect six month. He is an even worse choice than the current contenders for the Democrat nomination. He wants to surrender our sovereinty to the UN. He also wants to destroy the economy of the US, while rent seekers who support him get rich with the goofy carbon trading scheme.

There is an article in American Thinker today about how German terrorists were dealt with after WWII. Eisenhower simply shot anyone captured who was not in uniform. It is estimated that the US killed 13 for every American killed by the German terrorists, who were called Werewolves. (Under Eisenhower there would be no Guantanamo issue because there would be no prisoners there; all captured were summarily executed.) As might be expected, even then, the Americans were not as tough as the French and the Russians. When a Russian was killed, the Russians would wipe out the entire village where it happened; kill everyone and burn the entire village. Even with this approach, the Werewolves were still active into the 1950's, fully five years after the war ended. One area I have disagreed with President Bush is on the Rules of Engagement in Iraq. We should have crushed the Sunni's, and there should not be anyone at Guantanamo. I suppose the Democrat's would not have stood for that, but they should be made to understand that a lot of Americans have died because of our ROE. I think Americans vaguely understand that Democrats do not have the will to defend the country. I hope that after the next major attack the Islamists want to conduct on us that the Democrats will change and decide to fight. They probably won't support a Republican but might be willing to support a Democrat President.

It was just announced that Johannesburg, South Africa is going to host one of Al Gore's Global Warming Concerts in a few weeks. And, right on schedule, Johannesburg just got its first snow in 26 years. Actually, the Southern Hemisphere is experiencing a colder than usual winter. And, up here in Ft. Worth we are having a cooler than normal Summer. How can that be? I'm sure Al can explain it all; it's a matter of faith. I'm glad he just wants to appease the gods by planting trees instead of sacrificing virgins as the old-time witch doctors did.

I have written before about how Islam is not just a religion, but is also a political system. And about how Muslims are attempting to defeat the West by infiltration using a strategy developed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Here is a blog from "Gates of Vienna" with a piece by someone from Denmark where the Muslims are attempting to take over. (By the way, for those who don't know the significaance of the date September 11 to Muslims, that is the day in 1683 when they were defeated at their high water mark in the West at the Gates of Vienna.)

Our Moral High Horses
by Baron Bodissey

I’ve been blogging for almost three years now, so I’ve gotten used to writing every day. The engine stays warm and the gears are all greased up, so that I can crank out the rhetoric whenever I need it. I find a topic, churn out a rant, and then go back to my real job.But it never fails to amaze me how some of our commenters, people who keep no blogs of their own, can write concisely and elegantly on a topic and get to the heart of an issue much effectively than I can. It’s even more remarkable when some of the most eloquent writers do not have English as their native language.Our Danish commenter Phanarath is one such writer. The essay below was taken from an exchange of opinion between him and another commenter on Monday’s post.

Phanarath’s essay is part of a larger discussion about the folly of treating Islam as a religion like other religions. Islam is a political ideology, and modern radical Muslims have become adept at manipulating the tolerance of our free societies to advance their political agenda and gain local control within our political systems. Their long-term goal — as stated clearly in the propaganda of the Muslim Brotherhood and groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir — is complete control, when the conditions are ripe.

Here are Planarath's comments:

The place where my grandfather used to live, and where I sometimes played as a child, now lies within a Muslim area. Today it’s a very unsafe place with the problems I described above and much more, smaller things like gender separation, halal this and haram that and constant demands for special treatment for the mostly unemployed population of the area.

The only group of people behaving in this destructive way are Muslims. And it’s not just a few, as some might think; it’s a collective pattern that they repeat everywhere, wherever they become a local majority. The visible troublemakers might only be a small percentage, but the collective pattern always seems to be the same.

It’s Islam itself as a whole that creates these problems, and for most common people this is obvious. I get so tired of intellectuals who try to find ways to explain this simple fact away. And many have tried.- - - - - - - - - -
There are lots of Muslims who are kind and peaceful as individuals, that’s true. But they still show the same collective patterns when enough of them get together. They start to see themselves as opposed to the non-Muslims around them.

To target Jihad and Sharia as the real reason for the problems is just one more clever way to try to excuse Islam. And while intellectuals play mind games, teenage girls get raped. And yes, it makes me hostile, as it should, but I am sorry for directing it at you.

The essence of the problem comes from the Muslim identification as being in opposition to other groups. If we somehow make all Muslims sign a treaty or a contract, saying that they reject Jihad and Sharia, and we let them keep the identification as Muslims, they will simply hide their belief in Jihad and Sharia from us and keep it to themselves until they feel ready to confront us. As long as they can identify themselves as Muslims, it will be used to control the behavior of people within their system, and at the same time tell us what we want to hear.

Therefore we must strike at this identification, by banning Muslim organization, symbolism and garments that are used to signal that people are Muslim. By doing this we can remove the iron grip the Muslim community has over its members, and then it be will possible to slowly start to make things more positive and peaceful for everyone. I am pretty sure that many of those we call moderates would be happy about this, secretly at first.

Or we can sit on our moral high horses and wait for the whole thing to blow, while we argue details about how many peaceful Muslims there are or what verses we think are the most evil. We can let our children and people who don’t have the resources to relocate be the foot soldiers in a war, a war they never asked for and that we refuse to even acknowledge, while we convince ourselves that this somehow makes us better then others.

Last night I watched the old movie "Advise and Consent," a movie about the operation of the US Senate based on the novel written by Alan Drury. In the movie a Senator goes to the airport and catches a plane for which he does not have a ticket. He simply strolls onto the plane. On board the Vice President of the US, who is traveling alone, comes up and asks the Senator if he can sit beside him. The novel is set in the 1950's, and the movie was made in the early 60's. That was about the time I started traveling on airplanes, and the movie is correct in that at that time there was no security at airports. And apparently the Vice President really could travel without any security. I sat beside the Congressman from San Antonio once on a flight from Washington to Dallas, and he was alone. (The Congressman, who was a Democrat, told me a lot of stories about LBJ who apparently drank a lot and was rude to people.) Regarding security, I recall that at around that time President Truman used to go for walks around Washinton by himself. He did carry his pistol: he was a feisty guy who didn't think he needed a bodyguard. (More recently Bill Clinton often slipped away from the Secret Service Detail, but apparently that was to meet a "friend," not to go for a walk.) After Truman left office he was invited back to Washington; he drove himself from Missouri because he didn't have the money to fly. Ex-Presidents today wouldn't have that problem. Truman was the last "average" American to be President, and there probably won't be another. That is sad for the country.

President Bush made a speech to the Muslims in Washington today. I suppose he has to try to win them over, but I don't expect them to help us in the war on terror. The majority of Muslims agree with the aims of the terrorists even though they may not agree with use of terror as a tactic. The moderate Muslims want to establish an Islamic state in America with Sharia Law just as much as the terrorists do, but they are willing to use the "nose under the tent" approach. The Muslim Brotherhood came up with the strategy back in the 1980's. The idea is to infiltrate, demand special considerations such as foot washers, not allowing dogs in Taxi's, refusing to sell pork, etc. and when numerous enough, though still a minority, begin to use strong-arm tactics. This strategy is further along in Europe than in the US.

A lot of our problem started with Teddy Kennedy's immigration law passed back in the 1960's that allowed large numbers of Muslims to immigrate to the US. The Europeans are beginning to realize their peril, and are changing their immigration laws to stop Muslims from coming, and to attempt to deport them. Our Senate and our President are apparently still unaware of the threat, or are ignoring it.

Britian has fallen under control of the European Union. This is a sad day for the US. We have lost our best ally. I feel certain that the "Special Relationship' is no more. At this point it is the US and Australia against the evil Islamic threat.

In an opinion piece in the Ft Worth Star Telegram this week Joe Galloway suggests that President Bush ordered the abuses that happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Galloway is one of those who suffers from Bush Derangement Syndrome. What the US troops did, late at night with no officers around, was about like the Fraternity hazing that happened when I was in college. In fact, some students died from the hazing, but none of the Iraqi's died, or were even injured. Galloway, and Teddy Kennedy, seem to have forgotten, or are ignoring, that under Saddam in that prison men were hanged on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and women were hanged on Tuesday and Thursday.

Moral equivalence as practiced by liberals is a funny thing. The terrorists the US has locked up are eating better than our troops, get special consideration for their religious rituals, etc. Prisoners of the terrorists often get their heads cut off on TV. A British journalist named Johnston, who apparently was sympathetic to the terrorist cause, was forced to make a statement on video wearing a suicide vest. That seems to me to be more severe torture than anything alleged to have been done by the US. But I only hear Democrats and other liberals attack the US for alleged torture, but not the terrorists for real torture.

There is a civil war between drug cartels going on in Mexico at present. About 1300 people have been killed so far this year. Police stations have been attacked and all the policemen there killed. Politicians have been assassinated. There have been about as many people killed as have been killed in Iraq this year. Why haven't we seen anything about this drug war in the press?

On Juneteenth (for non-Texans, that is 19 June, the date slavery ended in Texas as opposed to 8 May for the rest of the US; for some reason Juneteenth is now celebrated over the entire country) a bunch of black guys beat a Latino man to death down in Austin for no real reason. (The Latino was a passenger in a car that stuck a black child, who was uninjured.) The police say it was not a hate crime. I suppose that makes sense since hate crime laws only apply to straight white males. Personally I think hate crime laws are stupid, and are another example of liberals who want to do something symbolic to show their moral superiority. It is already against the law to murder someone, for example, so what is gained by having a hate crime law? It is obvious that hate crime laws are aimed squarely at straight white males, since they are the only people ever charged with violating them, so the Supreme Court should strike the laws down.

Here is another piece on global warming from the blog "Greenis Watch." No matter whether or not one believes in the global warming dogma, there is no doubt that the intent of the supporters is to destroy the economy of the United States. This is why Europeans and other socialists have joined with the UN IPCC to push for limiting carbon dioxide output in the US, without doing much in other countries. As mentioned in the article, the US has a lot of trial lawyers and opportunists like Al Gore who are happy to help out. It is curious to me that so many people want to return the US to an economy of substenence farming; something that would not support anything approaching the population of 300 million people in the US.

Hold the line on global warming

What should conservatives do about global warming? Jim Manzi suggests in his June 25 National Review cover story ("Game Plan") that conservatives embrace junk science and "manage" global climate change so that they can "peel off" 1 percent of the votes from the "opposing coalition" in some future presidential election. Manzi's is a recipe for social, political and economic disaster - not just for conservatives, but for everyone, with the possible exception of the misanthropic, back-to-nature socialists among us. "It is no longer possible, scientifically or politically, to deny that human activities have very likely increased global temperatures.," intones Manzi, who has apparently spent too much time watching "An Inconvenient Truth." It's clear from his article that he neither understands the science nor the politics of global warming. Manzi says we should believe in global warming because of the "underlying physics." He writes, "All else equal, the more CO2 molecules we have in the atmosphere, the hotter it gets." But both the underlying physics and historical climate data debunk this statement. Different greenhouse gases absorb different wavelengths of energy emitted by the Earth. The fact that only a limited amount of the Earth's emitted energy is available for absorption by CO2 and that CO2 has to compete with water vapor and clouds for that energy, results in a crucial (but little publicized) logarithimic relationship between CO2 and temperature - that is, as atmospheric CO2 increases, it absorbs less and less additional energy to produce correspondingly less and less additional warming. At some point, adding more atmospheric CO2 doesn't significantly change atmospheric temperature. To analogize, consider a window with many shades, each blocking half the incoming light. As successive shades are pulled, the transmitted light is halved and the effect of each shade is diminished. Eventually, there's no additional effect because previous shades have already absorbed the light to all but a vanishing degree. As more shades won't block more light, more CO2 won't cause significantly more warming. In fact, there's been more than enough greenhouse gas in the atmosphere to cause much greater warming than actually occurs since long before humans discovered fire. From a historical perspective, consider the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and global temperature for the period 1940-1970. As atmospheric CO2 levels steadily increased during this period, global temperatures decreased, giving rise to the 1970s-era scare of an impending ice age. It's also clear that, if there has been a relationship between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature since the 1970s, it's not readily apparent. And let's not forget the third-rail of global warming debate - one that Al Gore carefully slid over in his movie - the actual relationship between carbon dioxide and global temperature. While alarmists would have us assume that increases in atmospheric CO2 precede and cause increases in global temperature, the scientific data say the exact opposite. Historical data taken from polar ice core samples indicate that increases in temperature have preceded increases in atmospheric CO2 by several hundred years. Not letting this "inconvenient truth" spoil his movie, Al Gore only describes the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and temperature as "complex." Indeed, it is. So why let it get in the way of the most subtle yet audacious political power grab of our time. Manzi has taken Gore's bait and is running with it. We'll get to the politics in a moment, but there are a few other points to make about Manzi's presentation of the science. Manzi writes that, "The most important scientific debate is really about.feedback effects," by which he refers to the notion that changes in atmospheric CO2 cause a complicated set of feedback effects that supposedly magnify and reduce the greenhouse effect. Manzi specifically mentions that higher atmospheric temperatures melt the polar ice caps, which in turn, supposedly causes more warming, and that more atmospheric CO2 increases plant growth which removes CO2 from the atmosphere, thereby cooling the climate. The reality, however, is that these feedback loops are hypothetical in nature and no one really understands them, if they exist. No one knows why the Arctic ice caps seem to be receding. Glacial melting is a complex geologic event that seems to have little to do with atmospheric temperatures. During the warming period from 1880 to 1938, it's estimated that the atmospheric CO2 increased by an estimated 20 parts per million. But from 1938 to 2003 - a period of essentially no increase in Arctic warming - the atmospheric CO2 increased another 60 parts per million. It doesn't seem plausible, then, that Arctic temperatures are significantly influenced by atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases. Global warming worriers can take no comfort from Antarctic data either. Over the last 30 years, atmospheric CO2 increased by about 15 percent, from about 328 parts per million to about 372 parts per million. But the Antarctic temperature trend for that period indicates a slight cooling. This observation contrasts sharply with the relatively steep Antarctic warming observed from 1949 to 1974, which was accompanied by a much more modest increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. As to trees removing CO2 from the atmosphere, well, some do and some don't. Researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory recently reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (April 17) that while tropical forests exert a cooling influence on global climate, forests in northern regions, because of their absorption of sunlight, exert a warming influence - and it's not just a trivial climatic effect. Based on the researchers' computer modeling, forests above 20 degrees latitude in the Northern Hemisphere - that is, north of the line of latitude running through Southern Mexico, Saharan Africa, central India and the southernmost Chinese island of Hainan - will warm surface temperatures in those regions by an estimated 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. It would seem that climate jihadists might well start their anti-warming campaigns in the chainsaw isle of their local hardware stores, rather than coming for our SUVs, incandescent light bulbs and thermostats. Manzi's reading of the political situation is as wrong-headed as his facts and reasoning on the science. He suggests that conservatives turn global warming alarmism into a political advantage by essentially out-marketing the enviros on the solutions. "Conservatives should propose policies that are appropriately optimistic, science-based and low-cost. A key political question is there fore which side could more effectively use its position on carbon taxes to peel off 1 percent of the relevant votes from the opposing coalition," he writes. Why won't putting a happy-face on being the low-cost-provider of planetary apocalypticism work? Because averting planetary disaster is not what global warming alarmism is all about. There are many nefarious agendas driving the global warming controversy, none of them have anything to do with "saving" the planet, and to pretend they don't exist is to truly live in denial. First, there are the radical left-wing environmentalists whose goal - through control of energy production and use, and ultimately the economy - is global socialism. As Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore related in the recent Channel 4 (UK) documentary, entitled "The Great Global Warming Swindle," by the mid-1980s, environmental goals - e.g., clean air and clean water - had become so mainstream that activists had to adopt more extreme positions to remain anti-establishment. Then when the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended, many "peace-niks" and left-wing political activists moved over to environmental activism, bringing their "neo-Marxist" political philosophy with them. As Moore puts it, environmentalism became the "new guise for anti-capitalism." Then there are the Europeans who are responsible for launching global warming alarmism in the first place. When Margaret Thatcher became UK Prime Minister in 1979, her mandate was to reduce Britain's economic decline. Thatcher wanted to make the UK energy-independent through nuclear power - she didn't like her country's reliance on coal, which politically empowered the coal miner unions, or oil, which empowered Middle Eastern states. So Thatcher latched onto her science adviser's notion that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide warmed the planet in a harmful way, thereby providing the perfect political cover for advancing her nuclear power agenda without having to fight the miners or Arab oil states. She empowered the U.K. Meteorological Office to begin global climate change research, a move that eventually led to the 1988 creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations' group that has come to be the "official" international agency for global warming alarmism. The Europeans now see global warming as a means of hampering U.S. economic competitiveness through increased energy prices. In a global warming-worried world, it becomes more expensive to use coal, for example. About 52 percent of U.S. electricity is produced by burning coal. France, in contrast, gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. Guess whose economy takes the hit. The Europeans also know that environmentalists and trial lawyers will ensure that greenhouse gas emissions regulations are strictly enforced in the U.S. The same cannot be said for Europe. There is also the gigantic global warming bureaucracy that's been created over the last 20 years. Whereas there used to be only a handful of scientists who called themselves atmospheric scientists, now there are legions of self-proclaimed "climatologists" along with the attendant bureaucracies to support them. U.S. taxpayers alone support this gang to a tune of about $5 billion per year. Where a zoologist might previously have had difficulty getting a grant to study the mating habits of squirrels, a whole new world of possibilities opens up if the newly minted climato-zoologist asks for funding to study whether changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide are making female squirrels friskier. Perhaps the most effective of these pro-global warming groups is big business. The alternative energy industry uses global warming fearmongering to sell subsidized, but still high-priced energy. Wal-Mart wants us to pay $5.99 for inferior but climate-friendly light bulbs, rather than $0.75 for traditional incandescent bulbs. Dupont and other manufacturing giants want Congress to dole out global warming pork for their past, voluntary reductions in greenhouse gases. Goldman Sachs owns part of the climate exchanges on which permits to emit greenhouse gases are to be traded. Global warming hysteria was just that, until big business climbed aboard the climate railroad. Now with its army of lobbyists in Washington, many businesses see global warming as a lucrative endeavor and they are trying to engineer congressional action for their own limited interests. And let's not forget Congress and other state and local politicians who, not surprisingly, have adopted the Green veneer of virtue. "Green-ness" has become the new moral high ground that few dare to challenge. Those that do are pilloried as "skeptics" and likened to Holocaust deniers. It's no surprise that so many politicians - not a courageous lot to start with - have opted to join the Big Green machine. All this apparently is lost on Manzi whose penultimate thought is, "But by getting past denial and taking a science-based approach to the issue, a clever candidate could take a principled stand that pays major tactical dividends." But cleverness will not likely protect our freedoms and wallets from the Greens, Europeans, global bureaucracy, rent-seeking businesses and Congress. These groups need to be sternly faced-down with the scientific and economic realities of global warming. Right now, conservatives are leading the charge in favor of sound science, and against climate clamoring and profiteering. That should continue to be our "game plan." That is the principled stand.

Here is an article on "Scientific Malpractice" from the blog "Greenie Watch." It is hard for me to tell if the global warming dogma is being spread by true believers or by scoundrels. I suspect that most of the actual scientists are true believers, but many of the politicians, who are by far the larger element of those involved, are probably scroundrels.

Malpractice in scienceI was writing at my laptop on Saturday, June 16, while watching television and the disbarment proceedings of the lawyer and prosecutor Mike Nifong of Raleigh, North Carolina. The proceedings were led by the chairman of the disciplinary committee, F. Lane Williamson, who stripped the prosecutor of his lawyer's license and disbarred him. According to Williamson, Nifong had broken North Carolina's rules of professional conduct more than two dozen times. Stunningly he had also withheld exculpatory DNA evidence showing that all 3 of the defendants were innocent. The legal process of exoneration of the 3 young men had taken more than a year, destroyed their lives, and sullied the entire lacrosse team, the reputation of Duke University and its hate-filled faculty. It directly impacted the families, friends, and the community not to mention the several million dollars spent in the defense of innocent young men. At least we can acknowledge that in the legal systems in our nation we do have an appeals process for legal malpractice, however slow, ponderous, and costly it is. Unfortunately, we do not have such a corrective system to appeal scientific malpractice, no fixed rules for scientific misconduct and few penalties of any significance. A few get noticed, a few are embarrassed, but serious sanctions are rare and are quite sporadic (http://tinyurl.com/plsbn). Examples abound in environmental science, regulation, and litigation. Adding to this are too many editors of science journals who have assumed advocacy roles for promoting specific agendas, as well as the failure of the peer review processes. DDT is one of the most effective tools ever in the fight against malaria (http://tinyurl.com/2xzquc). Yet it was banned in 1972 by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is still banned and the malarial death rates continue by the thousands. And talk about the repression of evidence. During the DDT hearings of 1972, some scientists stated that DDT was a human carcinogen. This was shown to be untrue. Some scientists said that DDT caused eggshell thinning in birds. This was also shown to be untrue. Some scientists said that DDT caused declines in bird populations. This was untrue. A number of bird populations increased many times during the periods of DDT use. Even with substantial contrary evidence available at the time, the EPA proceeded to ban DDT. And talk about scientific malpractice ruining lives. The EPA ban with full support of the environmental movement has led to the malaria deaths of more than 30,000,000 people since then. Additionally, hundreds of millions suffer from the non-fatal effects of the disease. Yet we have no appeals process for such scientific malpractice, not even follow-up activities to determine impacts of the decision to ban DDT. There are many other environmental issues as well which have involved heavy use of scientific malpractice, with no threat of scientific review or penalties. Without any viable process for appealing the malpractice of science, the nation and the world continue to suffer egregiously both in horrendous wasted costs and millions of lives lost. The global warming issue is just the latest in a long series of pseudo-alarms involving scientific malpractice. And talk about the misrepresentation of data. The `hockeystick" issue is but one. The irresponsible research paper which developed the hockeystick chart was presented by the authors as representing the last 1000 years of global temperature data. In actuality it did not do this. Problems were found immediately. The chart did not show, for example, the well-known Middle Age Warming which peaked around 1100 AD at a warmer time when Vikings were farming in and raising sheep in Greenland. It did not show the Little Ice Age which lasted for centuries and extended into the 1800s. Yet this chart was approved by the IPCC editors and reviewers, was embraced by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and incorporated into its 2001 Third Assessment Report (TAR). Based in part on these findings the IPCC had urged the nations of the world to embrace these findings and use them to formulate crippling multi-national energy and emission policies. Only with great diligence and phenomenal computer and statistical skills by two men, was the fraud discovered. Without them this may never have been discovered, certainly not by the IPCC and supporters. See for example, (http://tinyurl.com/2echm7). All of those parties above, the authors, the IPCC editors, the peer reviewers, and the IPCC itself are culpable in promoting the fraud of the hockeystick. The warmer times of the Medieval Warming Period and the cooler times of the Little Ice Age and the million years of earlier global climates all tell a different story of climate change and its likely causes. And these didn't involve mankind, CO2, or the so-called crimes of capitalism. Talk about withholding exculpatory evidence. And talk about harmful agendas and the ethically challenged among the warmers. In December, 2006 Dr. David Deming, a geophysicist at the University of Oklahoma, gave testimony to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (http://tinyurl.com/yf9q8t). In 1995 he had published an article in Science on borehole data which indicated a slight warming in North America over the past 100 to 150 years. And talk about media bias. The week his Science article appeared he was contacted by a reporter at National Public Radio (NPR). He offered to interview Dr. Deming only on the condition that Deming state that the warming was due to human activity. Deming refused and the reporter hung up. Talk about the suppression of information. In that same testimony Deming said he got an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. The researcher said "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warming Period". The MWP was inconsistent with the warming agenda. "An Inconvenient Truth", one might say. Such unscientific and irresponsible behavior can go unchecked and uncorrected indefinitely because there is no formal corrective structure in place in science, as there are in the legal community. There is no price to be paid by abusers. Orchestrating pre-determined scientific outcomes is dishonest, unethical, costly, and dangerous. We saw this in the DDT fiasco. In fact it is not science. It is naked dishonesty. In promoting the case of "man-made global warming" which specifically targets and limits the US capacity to produce energy from fossil fuels (providing transportation and 55% of our electricity), it is also treasonous.

I keep reading that the Earth's temperature is rising the fastest in history. That may be true if the record starts in 1920, about the time that there were temperature measurements being made all over the world. Even then, it is odd since the average temperature measurements peaked in 1998, and have not increased since then. Personally I have severe doubts about the average temperature measurements. But, assuming the average temperature measurements are correct, I find it hard to believe that an average temperature increase of 1 degree Fahrenheit over 100 years would make any difference to plant and animal life, or would melt the polar ice caps. A lot of the claims I read about global warming seem ridiculous even if we assume that human generated carbon dioxide is causing some warming.

China has now surpassed the US as the largest generator of carbon dioxide. But, the Greens still think the US is the major problem because China generates all that carbon dioxide producing goods for the US.

Democrats say they want to achieve energy independence for the United States. Curiously they want to stop further drilling for oil in the US, or in coastal waters. They also want to prevent gasification of coal or exploitation of oil shale, or building more nuclear powered electricity generation stations. Some of their Green supporters want to cease operation of the hydroelectric plants in the US. They seem intent on achieving energy independence through conservation alone. The US produces on the order of 8 million barrels of oil per day, and uses up toward 19 million barrels per day. It is unlikely that conservation alone can close the gap. It is apparent that Democrats are talking about a reduction in our standard of living.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants to mandate that automobiles achieve a fleet average of 52 mpg. I wonder if that mileage requirement is based on gasoline, or ethanol. If ethanol, the new cars are going to be very small; they will be too small even if the fuel is gasoline. When I was young motorcycles didn't get 52 mpg. It appears that we will all be riding motorized bicycles in the future.

I think that if enacted Reid's mandate would destroy the American Auto Manufacturers, Ford, GM, and Chrysler. One result would be that today's cars will be on the road a lot longer. If a B-52 can remain in service for 75 years, as is planned, there is no reason why cars couldn't last that long given proper maintenance and repair. I'm sure that my current car, a Lincoln LS, would last the rest of my life. Consider Cuba; they are still driving 1950's American cars there. It can be done. If Reid is successful, then I would expect that in a few years there would be a law to ban repair of older cars. Or there would be an exorbitant tax on older cars to force them off the road.

It is now well known that George Bush, perhaps with the aid of Karl Rove, is responsible for everything bad that happpens in the world. People are now beginning to recognize that the great mystery of the age is, how does he do it? Is he truly the Anti-Christ?

This morning while I was at cardiac rehab I saw a segment on Foxnews about a law firm that gives seminars to companies on how to legally get around hiring American engineers so they can hire lower wage foreigner engineers with the H-1B Visa program. I gather that the seminar is available on Youtube. Naturally, the Lawyers are not violating the law, they are just teaching companies how to get around it. Maybe this is like tax law, where lawyers work as congressional staffers writing the tax code, and then go into private practice to make their fortune by showing people how to use loopholes in the laws they wrote.

Here is a study of climate in Central Canada during the twentieth century.

St. George, S. 2007. Streamflow in the Winnipeg River Basin, Canada: Trends, Extremes and Climate Linkages. Journal of Hydrology, 332, pp., 396-411.

This paper studies temperature in the Winnipeg River Basin from 1924 to 2003 and found no temperature change, monthly, seasonal, or annual. That is not surprising to me, but it goes against what is predicted by the Global Circulation Models used to predict coming climate catastrophe. The GCMs predict the most temperature increase in the center of Northern land masses such as central Canada. I wonder how James Hansen and Al Gore will explain this. Probably they won't, since there is a "scientific consensus on Global warming, there is no need to look at actual data. No doubt this St. George fellow ought to be out slaying dragons, not casting doubt on the "scientific consensus."

In a tragedy this week nine firemen were killed when a warehouse collapsed in a fire. Apparently the steel girders lost strength due to heating and the roof of the building collapsed. I have no knowledge of the design of the building, but in similar warehouse buildings I have seen there is no insulation on the steel beams. The World Trade Center did have insulation, so it took longer for it to collapse. The now-banned asbestos insulation is the best. I wonder if anyone has told Rosie O'Donnell about this latest steel buliding collapse. Since she believes that there has never been an instance where steel has lost strength due to higher temperature, Rosie may have to tell us that Bush used explosive charges to bring down this latest bulding.

The Muslims have been insulted again, and are threatening to send suicide bombers to the West for revenge. This time Queen Elizabeth knighted Salmon Rushdie, who was sentenced to death by Khomeni for writing "The Satanic Verses." Those Muslims have really thin skins. I wonder why they think being knighted is a big deal. A lot of those who are knighted now are drugged out rock stars and old actors. This time the threat came from a Pakistani Minister. I'm afraid that moderate Muslims are the ones that want war with the West; the minority extremist fringe are the ones who believe in tolerance.

There were some interesting items on the TV news today. One of President Clinton's Security Advisors explained how the civil war between Fatah and Hamas in Gaza is George Bush's fault, because he abandoned the "peace process." I never understood the peace process since it never seemed to get anywhere after decades. Then there was a story about some bureaucrat at the UN who says that the genocide in Darfur is caused by climate change, the result of global warming caused by capitalist nations like the US. (And thus caused by George Bush.) Everything bad that happens is ultimately George Bush's fault. What will the liberals blame all bad things on after Bush leaves office?

Here is an interesting discussion about how "scientists" arrive at the global average temperature. I have always suspected that the historical records are highly suspect. Back around 1900 and until recently communities had a thermometer situated in some convenient place, not necessarily an appropriate place, and sometime every afternoon some guy named 'Old Stumpy' went out and recorded the "official high" for the day. Sometimes around 6 AM he recorded the "minimum." This was not done with any scientific rigor.

Recently I have been reading that 2006 was the hottest year on record for the US. It turns out that was not true. In addition, not mentioned in the article below, worldwide 2006 was about 0.15 F cooler than 2005. I don't read much about that either. Of course, the true believer scientists don't worry about that. They are certain that carbon dioxide is causing the global average temperature to go up, so they fall back on the error bound of the measurements which is about 0.5 F. (I would argue that the historical record has a much larger error margin.)

Here is the article:

By Bill Steigerwald
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, June 17, 2007

Remember in January when the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its good friends in media trumpeted that 2006 was the warmest year on record for the contiguous United States?

NOAA based that finding - which allegedly capped a nine-year warming streak "unprecedented in the historical record" - on the daily temperature data that its National Climatic Data Center gathers from about 1,221 mostly rural weather observation stations around the country.

Few people have ever seen or even heard of these small, simple-but-reliable weather stations, which quietly make up what NOAA calls its United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN).

But the stations play an important role in detecting and analyzing regional climate change. More ominously, they provide the official baseline historical temperature data that politically motivated global-warming alarmists like James Hansen of NASA plug into their computer climate models to predict various apocalypses

NOAA says it uses these 1,221 weather stations -- which like the ones in Uniontown and New Castle are overseen by local National Weather Service offices and usually tended to by volunteers -- because they have been providing reliable temperature data since at least 1900.

But Anthony Watts of Chico, Calif., suspects NOAA temperature readings are not all they're cracked up to be. As the former TV meteorologist explains on his sophisticated, newly hatched Web site surfacestations.org, he has set out to do what big-time armchair-climate modelers like Hansen and no one else has ever done - physically quality-check each weather station to see if it's being operated properly.

To assure accuracy, stations (essentially older thermometers in little four-legged wooden sheds or digital thermometers mounted on poles) should be 100 feet from buildings, not placed on hot concrete, etc. But as photos on Watts' site show, the station in Forest Grove, Ore., stands 10 feet from an air-conditioning exhaust vent. In Roseburg, Ore., it's on a rooftop near an AC unit. In Tahoe, Calif., it's next to a drum where trash is burned.

Watts, who says he's a man of facts and science, isn't jumping to any rash conclusions based on the 40-some weather stations his volunteers have checked so far. But he said Tuesday that what he's finding raises doubts about NOAA's past and current temperature reports.

"I believe we will be able to demonstrate that some of the global warming increase is not from CO2 but from localized changes in the temperature-measurement environment."

Meanwhile, you probably missed the latest about 2006. As NOAA reported on May 1 - with minimum mainstream-media fanfare - 2006 actually was the second- warmest year ever recorded in America, not the first. At an annual average of 54.9 degrees F, it was a whopping 0.08 degrees cooler than 1998, still the hottest year.

NOAA explained that it had updated its 2006 report "to reflect revised statistics" and "better address uncertainties in the instrumental record." This tinkering is standard procedure. NOAA always scientifically tweaks temperature readings for various reasons -- weather stations are moved to different locations, modernized, affected by increased urbanization, etc.
NOAA didn't say whether it had adjusted for uncertainties caused by nearby burn barrels.

The Democratic Party is drifting toward Fascism, and that large corporations support that is surprising to many people. It should be no surprise if the socialist nature of large corporations is considered. Fascists are collectivists who do not assume state ownership of corporations, but who do exert control over the economy. This is attractive to large corporations since the result is regulations written by the large corporations that eliminate smaller competition. France has an economy much like that today. There's not much innovation there. If America had been Fascist 30 years ago, new companies such as Microsoft and Cisco would not have been possible. Established companies such as IBM and the old AT&T would dominated those business areas, and we would be the poorer for it. Now, of course, Microsoft and Cisco may be all for Fascism since it will make it easier for them to maintain dominance in their fields without having to worry about the emergence of disruptive technology. If Hillary Clinto is elected President we can expect the emergence of Fascism, though they won't call it that.

(There is a lot of misunderstanding of what Fascism is. Democrats regularly refer to Republicans as Fascists, but it is doubtful that many of them understand what Fascists are. Fascists subordinate the interests of the individual to the interests of the state. Many people refer to Fascists as right wingers. That may be because they were to the right of communists. It also more nearly reflects right wing in European terms rather than American terms, where the right supports economic liberty. Fascists are authoritarian, and many people thnk the Republicans are more authoritarian than Democrats, but I disagree. I think it is clear that Republicans are less authoritarian in economic matters than Democrats. Under Democrats "rent seekers" do well rather than true innovators. Large Corporations inevitably become "rent seekers.")

The other day I read that global warming was causing the destruction of pine forests because pine beetles are not being killed back in the winter. It is curious that such a small worldwide change in average temperature of about 0.6 F over the last 50 years would affect pine beetles that much. It is even more curious considering that the Southwestern United States where most of the pine trees are located has actually seen a decline in average temperature. It seems that these days every bad thing that happens is caused by George Bush or global warming. I'll posit Williams's Law: every adverse effect in climate or food production or species endangerment is the result of global warming.

Reading some blogs such as the Daily Kos reveals that liberals support Hamas. There also seems to be general support of Iran. I hope this is just a matter of Bush Derangement Syndrome, and not an indication that the left is ready to surrender to Islam. The liberals appear to not regard Islam as a serious threat to the West. They seem willing to disregard what the leaders of Iran are saying, and Iran's support of terrorists.

Today, once again, the news from around the world is about members of "the religion of peace" killing people more or less at random. It is probably the fault of the Jews, Hindu's, Buddhists, etc. Muslims have an obligation to kill those people who do not acknowledge the supremacy of Islam.

Nifong was disbarred. That's one down with Patrick Fitzgerald and Ronnie Earle to go. Nifong reportedly will appeal his disbarment on the grounds that other North Carolina prosecutors have done the same sort of things Nifong did without being punished. The problem with dishonest prosecutors may be widespread. That is a scary thought.

Here is what Teddy Roosevelt said about immigrants. He didn't mince any words and I agree with him. I think he would not like many of the current illegal aliens. (I've seen this before. I got this from Tammy Bruce's blog.)

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

Theodore Roosevelt, 1907.

This knocks out most Muslims and many Mexicans. I'm certain that today's multiculuralists would label Teddy a bigot.

Mike Nifong says he is going to resign. I say good riddance. We still have two Democrat prosecutors who need to punished in Patrick Fitzgerald and Ronnie Earle. Since the Libby trial I have read up some on Fitzgerald, and he is a nasty guy who is an overly agressive prosecutor who stretches the rules, misleads Courts, etc. I wonder why it is OK for the Prosecutors to lie as he did when he said he didn't know who leaked Valerie Plames name? Probably nothing will happen to Fitzgerald; in fact, when Democrats get control he will be in line for a top job. Ronnie Earle is a bad joke, even for Texas. But the liberal Democrats in Austin will probably keep electing him. The liberals don't care if he makes up laws as long as he is prosecuting Republicans.

Hamas is killing Fatah members in the Gaza Strip. It is curious that no one in the West is much concerned about that. If Israel were wiping out Fatah in a similar manner, there would be loud condemnation and draconian threats from Europe. I notice that the Muslims don't talk about killing Israelites, they talk about killing Jews. They want to kill all Jews in the World, not just the ones in Israel. My impression is that Europe wouldn't object too much to all Jews being killed.

It appears that Iran's master plan for the elimination of Israel is well underway. Hamas has taken over Gaza in a civil war with Fatah. Next Hamas will probably move on the West Bank. Syria has assasinated another leader in Lebanon, and is rattling the saber at Israel. So, it appears that Iran is moving their pieces into place for the final assault on Israel. I wonder if any of the US strategic planners have any counter plan? Or, are they even aware of the threat? Perhaps they have decided to sacrifice Israel. That would certainly be the desire of the Democrats. The Muslims are intent on destroying Western Civilization. I wonder if the West has the will to resist. Watching liberals like Alan Colmes, it appears that the liberal position is that Iran is justified, and it is our fault that we are under attack from Muslims.

The current illegal immigration into the United States is a disaster. Back in 1986 the US gave amnesty for illegal aliens, and made them citizens. At the time the government said that would be the last amnesty. Now the Congress apparently wants to do it again. A person or nation gets more of the behavior they reward, so there is every reason to believe that this action will cause more people to enter the country illegally. The government says they will now enforce the law; but, for some reason they have not enforced the current law so there is little reason to believe them. The Mexicans are a particular problem. There is an underclass of 75 million in Mexico. Mexico is adjacent to the US so it is relatively easy for them enter the US. There are currently 12 to 20 million Mexicans illegally in the US. At present about 26% of babies born in the US are born to illegal alien Mothers, mostly Mexicans. In Dallas over half of the babies born in Parkland Hospital have illegal alien Mothers, and in John Peter Smith Hospital in Ft. Worth about 75% have illegal alien Mothers. These are called "anchor babies" since under US tradition, the babies are US citizens. Becoming a US citizen is a real boon; each individual's share of the US infrastructure is about $500,000. The laws currently being considered will result in most of the underclass in Mexico immigrating to the US because of family re-unification features. Since these people are poorly educated, this will put enormous strain on the US welfare system. It is pretty clear that Mexican families cost the US taxpayers money. There seems to be a coalition of conservative business owners who want cheap, and some say almost slave, laborers and liberals who believe that every person in the world has a Constitutional right to come to the US. (On C-Span I once heard a Mexican American Congressman say the latter, a view shared by many Hispanics.) A lot of people think that Mexicans have a right to come to Texas since Texas was once part of Mexico. But there were only about 3000 Hispanics in Texas in 1836, and they were not indigenous to Mexico, but had been born as Spaniards. If the indigenous people of Mexico had come to Texas in earlier times, the Commanches would have killed them. When I was born less than 2% of the people in Texas were Mexicans. Now about 35% are Mexican, and most of them have come since 1986. These immigrants are putting serious strains on the educatioal system of Texas, and on the infrastructure in general. We used to have plenty of electric power, for example, but now the system is about to be overloaded. At the same time, political interference is preventing the construction of new power plants. Welcoming in the underclass of Mexico will overwhelm us.

Prior to 1965 the US allowed legal immigrants who were educated, and could contribute to the US economy. Most of them were from Europe. In 1965 Senator Kennedy changed all of that with a law that give preference to people from third world countries. This has resulted in a few million Muslims coming to the US.

Immigration is a serious issue. It appears that we are unwilling to seal the border, so the situation may be hopeless. Here are some steps we should take, but are not like to take.

We should get rid of the "anchor baby" tradition. There is no Constitutional basis for it, and other countries do not do it.

We should ban the immigration of Muslims. Islam is a political concept masquerading as a religion, and is completely incompatible with the US Constitution.

We should announce that current illegal aliens will not become citizens unless they go home and enter through the proper process.

We should establish a quest worker program and require that all people currently in the US illegally sign up within some short time period. After that, all illegal aliens found in the country without a permit should be ejected from the country without delay.

We should require local governments to enforce the immigration laws. Local politicians who refuse should be prosecuted.

Companies or individuals who employ aliens without a guest worker permit should be severly prosecuted.

Welfare payments should not be paid to Illegal aliens or to guest workers. Guest worker families should not receive free schooling.

Candidates for citizenship in the US should be educated, and able to contribute to the economy of the US.

That is some of the things we should do. The United States simply cannot absorb all of underclass from third world countries. Consider Mexico for example. Mexico has as much as the United States in terms of natural attributes. Mexico is a failed country because of the people who live there, not because of anything the US has done. We have no obligation to take care of them.

Al Gore says that George Bush has used scare tatics to get people to support the war on terror. It is odd to me that Al Gore does not regard his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" as using scare tactics, such as predicting a 20 foot rise in sea level, apparenly soon, though he doesn't specify when this might be.

I'm not the only one who thinks that the peopel who favor totalitarian control over people have adopted global warming as their mechanism not that socialism and communism have fallen out of favor. Here is what the Czech Presiden, Vaclav Klaus, tod a congressional committee (I got this from Melanie Phillip's blog):

The – so called – climate change and especially man-made climate change has become one of the most dangerous arguments aimed at distorting human efforts and public policies in the whole world.

My ambition is not to bring additional arguments to the scientific climatological debate about this phenomenon. I am convinced, however, that up to now this scientific debate has not been deep and serious enough and has not provided sufficient basis for the policymakers’ reaction. What I am really concerned about is the way the environmental topics have been misused by certain political pressure groups to attack fundamental principles underlying free society. It becomes evident that while discussing climate we are not witnessing a clash of views about the environment but a clash of views about human freedom.

As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants. Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism. This ideology preaches earth and nature and under the slogans of their protection – similarly to the old Marxists – wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning of the whole world.

The environmentalists consider their ideas and arguments to be an undisputable truth and use sophisticated methods of media manipulation and PR campaigns to exert pressure on policymakers to achieve their goals. Their argumentation is based on the spreading of fear and panic by declaring the future of the world to be under serious threat. In such an atmosphere they continue pushing policymakers to adopt illiberal measures, impose arbitrary limits, regulations, prohibitions, and restrictions on everyday human activities and make people subject to omnipotent bureaucratic decision-making. To use the words of Friedrich Hayek, they try to stop free, spontaneous human action and replace it by their own, very doubtful human design.

The environmentalist paradigm of thinking is absolutely static. They neglect the fact that both nature and human society are in a process of permanent change, that there is and has been no ideal state of the world as regards natural conditions, climate, distribution of species on earth, etc. They neglect the fact that the climate has been changing fundamentally throughout the existence of our planet and that there are proofs of substantial climate fluctuations even in known and documented history. Their reasoning is based on historically short and incomplete observations and data series which cannot justify the catastrophic conclusions they draw. They neglect the complexity of factors that determine the evolution of the climate and blame contemporary mankind and the whole industrial civilization for being the decisive factors responsible for climate change and other environmental risks.

By concentrating on the human contribution to the climate change the environmentalists ask for immediate political action based on limiting economic growth, consumption, or human behavior they consider hazardous. They do not believe in the future economic expansion of the society, they ignore the technological progress the future generations will enjoy, and they ignore the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society is, the higher is the quality of the environment.

The policymakers are pushed to follow this media-driven hysteria based on speculative and hard evidence lacking theories, and to adopt enormously costly programs which would waste scarce resources in order to stop the probably unstoppable climate changes, caused not by human behavior but by various exogenous and endogenous natural processes (such as fluctuating solar activity).

Regardless of what one thinks about Anthropogenic Global Warming , it must be acknowledged that carbon trading is one of the biggest scams in history. (It does let Laurie David, Al Gore, the guy from the movie Titanic, and others proclaim that they are "carbon neutral." The Kyoto Treaty is about two things: destroying the economy of the US, and making money without producing anything. Here is an excerpt of an inteview with a Russian carbon trader from the blog "Freezerbox."

The Bored Whore of Kyoto

BY ALEXANDER ZAITCHIK06.01.2007 ENVIRONMENT

Nothing drove home Russia's place in the growing pollution-trading business better than what one carbon finance guy told me at a conference last month sponsored by Gazprom and the World Bank. We were on drink number three or four at the reception when he dropped the green pretense and came clean.

"I don't know if climate change is caused by burning coal or sun flares or what," said the Moscow-based carbon cowboy. "And I don't really give a shit. Russia is the most energy inefficient country around, and carbon is the most volatile market ever. There's a lot of opportunity to make money."

One change that needs to be made to immigration law: children born to illegal aliens should not be citizens of the US. The number of cildren born to illegal aliens is enormous. Recently an article in the Fort Worth Star Telegram said that over half of the babies born at Parkland Hospital in Dallas have illegal alien mothers. Recently I read that back in 1994 36% of the babies born in California had illegal alien mothers. The percentage is probably much higher now. These babies are called "anchor babies" since they result in the parents being allowed to stay in the US. So, Mexicans Don't have to worry about a lot of red tape to get into the US; all they have to do is have a pregnant woman sneak acroos the border and have the baby in the US. This is bizarre. I doubt any other country would allow such a thing.

The Libby trial exposes some serious flaws in the American Justice system, which I think is broken and needs major repair. From Tom Maguire's blog, here is a quote attributed to Susan Estrich, not someone I agree with most of the time, but I completely agree with this:

SUSAN ESTRICH:
The only problem here is that there was no underlying crime. The answer to the question Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was initially appointed to investigate — had anyone violated the law in disclosing Ms. Plame's name in their effort to discredit her husband's criticism of the administration's war policy — was no. No one violated what we used to call the "Agents Law." Dick Armitage, the guy who admits he gave out her name in the first place, isn't facing time; nor are Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, or any of the reporters or news organizations who didn't hesitate to disclose her identity.

Libby is in trouble not for what he did, but because he wasn't as careful as the others during his interviews and grand jury testimony.
If he'd just said, "I don't recall" a hundred times, or even invoked the Fifth (whether properly or not, following the Monica Goodling approach), he wouldn't be bankrupt, ruined, disgraced and heading to prison.

There is something troubling about prosecutors using perjury and obstruction of justice to turn into criminals people who haven't committed any other crime. Instead of using the grand jury as a tool for investigating other criminal activity, it becomes the forum for creating criminal conduct. The role of the FBI and federal prosecutors becomes one of creating criminals instead of catching them. Technically, I know, it's not entrapment, but it's still different than the usual business of tracking down those who have violated the law and punishing them for their bad acts. The investigation doesn't solve the crime; it creates it.

MY THOUGHTS:
To me the Libby case was an example of political persecution. The whole thing started as a political dirty trick by the Democrats that originally didn't work well. It started with Joe Wilson's lies, but when the Administration responded there was suddenly an opportunity that opened up as Valerie Plame's role in the dirty trick was exposed. Senator Schumer demanded an investigation, and got his buddy James Comey to, probably illegally, name a special prosecutor. In Washington, DC with a black judge and a mostly black jury, you can get a conviction of a Republican for almost anything. In fairness to the jury, thanks to the judge, they didn't know as much about the facts of the case as the rest of us who followed it. One curious thing in the trial was that Fitzgerald sought and got extra punishment for Libby because the case was about revealing an agent's name, even though there was never any evidence that Libby was the person who actually revealed her name, and in fact it was known that he was not the one. (What is known is that Comey and Fitzgerald don't like Libby from past interactions.)

One unfortunate outcome of this is that we now know that if a Federal Agent comes to talk to you, it is wise to suddenly develop a bad memory. Hillary Clinton couldn't remember anything when she was questioned about her various scandals; that is a good lesson for all of us.

Some politically incorrect scientists think that the Earth is about to enter a phase of falling temperature. Here is the abstract of an article about Dr. Landscheidt's theory.

Abstract: Analysis of the sun’s varying activity in the last two millennia indicates that contrary to the IPCC’s speculation about man-made global warming as high as 5.8° C within the next hundred years, a long period of cool climate with its coldest phase around 2030 is to be expected. It is shown that minima in the 80 to 90-year Gleissberg cycle of solar activity, coinciding with periods of cool climate on Earth, are consistently linked to an 83-year cycle in the change of the rotary force driving the sun’s oscillatory motion about the centre of mass of the solar system. As the future course of this cycle and its amplitudes can be computed, it can be seen that the Gleissberg minimum around 2030 and another one around 2200 will be of the Maunder minimum type accompanied by severe cooling on Earth. This forecast should prove skillful as other long-range forecasts of climate phenomena, based on cycles in the sun’s orbital motion, have turned out correct as for instance the prediction of the last three El Niños years before the respective event.

The full article is here.

http://landscheidt.auditblogs.com/archives/24

It is hard for most people to accept, but liberals are generally opposed to freedom of speech. On University campuses Liberals are the ones behind speech codes and political correctness. One of my favorite quotes is from the female University President (I've forgotten her name) who said, "I'm not going to let anyone come here and say that I'm opposed to free speech." Socialist dictators like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro eliminate critics, sometimes with extreme prejudice. In Russia reporters who criticize the government often die suddenly. Here in the US the Democrats are now trying to bring back the misnamed "Fairness Doctrine." This insideous piece of legislation would require broadcasters to give equal time to opposing viewpoints. This is intended to hinder Rush Limbaugh. For example, broadcasters would be required to give Al Franken equal time to rebut Rush. Presumably they would not be able to force people to listen to Franken, who is not very entertaining, but I am sure they would like to find a way. Al Gore and his fellow believers in AGW are working hard to silence all "deniers." Here is an article about Gore's desire to eliminate free speech.

http://brookesnews.com/070406gore.html

Warren Buffet and George Soros say they like the National Socialist policies favored by Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama. It is not surprising that these two billionaires favor National Socialism. Back during the 1930's the rich and powerful in Germany and Austria supported the Fascists. While the Fascists took control of industry they didn't appropriate ownership. They put into place regulations that prevented competition, so it was a good deal for the owners. Soros actually helped the Nazi's impose their "final solution" on his fellow Jews. Soros excuses himself by saying that if he hadn't done it, someone else would have. I guess that makes it OK in his mind.

Gateway Pundit has an article on the Pershmega. I read somewhere that they said that if they captured George Bush they would give him a thousand kisses and carry him on their shoulders. At least the Kurds still like George. The Pershmega do not seem to be typical Muslim women: no veils, and they carry AK-47's.

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2007/06/peshmerga-women-steal-show-at-iraqi.html

Throughout history pundits have been predicting doom. Here is a summary of some of the recent predictions of doom.

http://www.godward.org/commentary/Out%20of%20the%20Box/Apocaholics%20Anonymous.htm

By the way, as is pointed out in this article, despite Al Gore's wishes, the hottest summer on record in the United States was 1936. Back then, Oklahoma almost dried up and blew away.

Democrats keep saying we should get out of Iraq and move our troops to Afghanistan to fight al Queada and find bin Laden. I must be missing something because the fighting in Afghanistan seems to be with the Taliban. And I am reading that the tribes in Pakistan are tired of al Queada and are beginning to kill them. We couldn't go after al Queada in Pakistan without Pakistan's OK, unless we want to go to war with Pakistan. And, it is clear that al Queada has more people in Iraq than in Afghanistan. So the Democrats are just playing games as usual.

Here is an article on Global Warming Deniers that is interesting.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=c47c1209-233b-412c-b6d1-5c755457a8af

This has the names of a lot of the prominent "deniers" but not all of them by any means. Those who support the global warming dogma are trying to suppress all dissent, and to prevent further study of the subject. It is clear that those who support the dogma are into politics rather than science, even if they are scientists, and are into spin rather than facts. It is amazing to me that they are withholding funding from honest researchers who are not "politically correct." The fatal flaw of the global warming dogma in my opinion is that the supporters decided that carbon dioxide was the driver, and were not interested in investigating any other possibility. They calibrated their computer models to generate the temperatures that were occurring with the assumption that the increase was caused by carbon dioxide, thus it follows that further increases in carbon dioxide would result in higher temperatures. The predictions do not appear to be coming true, but due to natural scatter (which is not reflected in the predictions, but which all acknowledge) it is too soon to tell for certain.

Hillary Clinton is concerned about the "vanishing middle class" in America. It turns out that, according to a study, "Social Stratification in the United States" by Stephen Rose, the middle class has shrunk due to people moving on up. Hillary apparently knows this, and plans to tax those people back into the middle class.

A lot is being said about President Bush "betraying" consevatives with his support of the new immigration bill that sooner or later allows citizenship for illegal aliens. Actually he has been consistent in this as he has in other campaign promises. In fact, he has come close to doing what he said than any other politician I am aware of. I did not agree with his position on illegal Mexican immigrants, and have been suspicious of the 'compassionate conservative' posture, which I think really means bigger government. As is usually the case in elections, I voted for Bush as the "lesser of two evils." Mark Steyn has a similar view to mine, as he wrote below:

I disagree with the President on illegal immigration but I can't honestly say that he "betrayed" me. Most of the stuff the base is mad about are things he openly championed in the 2000 race. He ran the most pro-Mexican, pro-federalization-of-education, pro-prescription-drugs-for-seniors campaign of any Republican Presidential candidate ever. The convention in Philadelphia was a non-stop riot of mariachi bands playing the Cucaracha alternating with cucaracha bands playing the Mariachi. I bumped into my own Senator, Bob Smith of New Hampshire, in downtown Philly and asked him how he was enjoying it. He said he'd tried to get in but he'd been denied entry. That's how multicultural and diversity-celebrating it was: guys with suspicious names like "Bob Smith" couldn't even get past security.President Bush has, broadly speaking, governed as he said he would seven years ago. Unfortunately, a big bunch of sophisticated types in the Republican base told themselves, "Hey, don't worry. This 'compassionate conservative' mumbo-jumbo is just a cunning feint to sucker the media and the swing voters." Au contraire, he meant it.There's a lesson there for Republicans.

Last week I mentioned an estimate I had seen that illegal aliens cost the US taxpayers an average of about $19,000 each, but I didn't know the source. The estimate is from a Heritage Foundation study by Robert Rector. The study indicates that the illegal aliens receive about $3 in benefits for every dollar they pay in taxes. The study also says that 60% of Americans receive more in benefits than taxes they pay. That is probably true. After all, it costs about $7000 to $8000 for very student in public school, but the students pay almost no taxes. And, most retired people receive more in benefits than taxes they pay when Social Security and Medicare are considered. With baby boomers retiring, life expectancy increasing, and more illegal aliens pouring in, the system will eventually collapse.

Global Warming is a hot issue now. The politicians are using the scare to try to impose more rules and regulations on us ordinary folks. The Democrats would like to use the global warming scare to cede more control to unelected UN functionaries in much the same way that the EU has done in Europe. They would also like to establish a UN taxing authority. The Democrats and their fellow socialists from Europe now realize that they need to implement their plan soon, since real world data is not validating the IPCC computer simulation predictions. And people are beginning to realize that the IPCC fudged the data on the past temperature history to support the impending doom scenario. In science it is always the mark of the scoundrel when attempts are made to silence critics, and to insist that their is no need for future inquiry since, "the science is settled." Never mind that the discussion is not about science, but rather about computer models. In my career I saw many cases in which the computer modelers insisted their model was correct even after tests repeatedly revealed the predictions were incorrect. Here is a youtube presentation on the subject of global warming entitled "Doomsday Called Off." The Democrats probably will call for putting the scientists in this production in jail for heresy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr5O1HsTVgA&mode=related&search=

This is in five parts, and is pretty long. It's worth a look, even if you are on board with that eminent scientist, and High Priest of the Global Warming religion, Al Gore.

There are some issues with the computer predictions that are not mentioned in the presentation. For example, the greenhouse gas theory indicates that temperatures should increase in a uniform pattern over the globe (more at the poles than at mid-latitudes), but that hasn't happened. The Arctic temperature has increased but most of the antarctic has gotten colder. And the temperature has gone up in the Northern Hemisphere, but not in the Southern Hemisphere. The theory requires that water vapor in the atmosphere increase, but recent research (since the video was made) suggests that the atmospheric water vapor content hasn't changed. All what might be called "inconvenient truths."