Judicial temperament?

A poster of Che Guevara hangs on the wall of a judge who found Ohio's death penalty law constitutionally lacking. But his idol Che was not very respectful of the niceties of justice, and loved to watch firing squads at work. Che once said:

"Judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution. We execute from revolutionary conviction."

Judge James Burge, whose wall is graced by Fidel, and Barack too, just declared that Ohio must change its lethal injection death penalty procedure because the current method is not quick and painless enough.

Leaving aside the irony of admiring a ruthless butcher while being perhaps a bit prissy about executions, how is it consistent with a judicial temperament to revere a butcher like Che?

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MEAN TO TEENS

The hike in the minimum wage passed by the Democratic majority in Congress last year is a big reason teen joblessness is at its highest level in 60 years. Americans are now finding [again] out the true cost of the minimum wage increases.

Wall Street wasn't stunned when the U.S. jobless rate jumped to 5.5 percent in May from 5 percent in April. It expected a repeat of past arbitrary price hikes have had on hundreds of thousands of youths looking for summer jobs. Many, if not most, won't find jobs because they've been priced out of the market:

• The minimum wage was hiked 14 percent to $5.85 an hour last July.
• Next month, it will go up an additional 12 percent to $6.55 an hour.
• In July 2009, it's slated to rise 10.7 percent to $7.25 an hour.

If that sounds like a lot, the actual cost is much higher after you fold in taxes, benefits and Social Security that businesses pay on behalf of young workers. Economist David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, has found a 10 percent minimum wage hike cuts employment of young, unskilled workers by 8.5 percent. [historically, every 10% increase in the mandated wage has been followed by a ~2% decrease in entry-level jobs]

Employers forced to shell out an added 40 percent over three years to employ the least educated, least trained and overall least productive workers are finding a good reason not to do so. Young people should get paid more only after they work a while, gain some experience and actually become valuable to their employer -- rather than having higher pay mandated by the federal government.

[so why do they do it time and again if it hurts our lowest income earners the most? A: Government labor unions, virtually all of which have hard-wired their cost of living increases not just to inflation but also what the minimum wage is. It goes up, their pay goes up. sweet]

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Violent Attacks from Mexico on the Rise

Attacks against agents of the U.S. Border Patrol and tourists are on the rise.

“This fiscal year 744 incidents of violence have been perpetrated against Border Patrol agents, a 26 percent increase over the same time last year,” reported Department of Homeland Security Secretary Micheal Chertoff in his third “State of Immigration Address” Monday. [snip]

While DHS has witnessed more attacks on their staff, other government agencies have shown concern about attacks on U.S. tourists traveling in Mexico. Earlier this year, the State Department issued a travel alert to caution U.S. tourists against increasing violence in Mexico that will be in effect through the summer.

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Hunting Season for Whites

Between the night of May 31 and the wee hours of the morning of June 1, 2008, between 20 and 30 black teenagers formed a mob to terrorize the citizens of Mount Clemens, Michigan. These hoodlums robbed people of cell phones and wallets, threw a brick through the window of a moving car, and beat up their victims so badly that at least one of their targets was hospitalized with a fractured skull. In an article in the Macomb Daily entitled “Mob, Carnival Attacks May Be Linked” (6/5/2008), the mother of one of the victims told police that “her son was on the ground trying to fend off the attackers who were ‘about ready to kick his head in’ when deputies arrived.”

The horror of what transpired was articulated in another article in the Macomb Daily entitled “Mob of Young Men Attacks” (6/2/2008)... [see article, snip]

In every single article about the mob incident in which 20 to 30 black teenagers terrorized Mount Clemens, the journalists of the Macomb Daily, Detroit Free Press, and Detroit News neglected to mention the race of the perpetrators of this horrific crime spree. or that of their targeted victims... [snip]

When Beckmann inquired as to whether or not there is a “law to charge them with some kind of hate crime,” Hackel [the Sheriff] answered, “Well, that’s questionable. I don’t know if it applies to an unprotected class, and I don’t know if whites are part of that. I’m not sure.”

Beckmann was shocked to hear Hackel suggest that whites are not entitled to equal protection under the law. A taken aback Beckmann asked:

“You mentioned ‘unprotected class.’ You mean white people are not protected by hate crime legislation?”

Hackel answered that question by saying, “It doesn’t appear as such at this point and time that there is something that would qualify.”

Even though a horde of black thugs beat to the point of unconsciousness one innocent white man who was reported to have a fractured skull, threw a brick at a car that was driven by an innocent white woman, and beat up an innocent white man at a gas station to the point where employees had to clean up the bloody mess the following day, it is unlikely that the thugs will be charged with committing hate crimes, because the criminals were black and the victims were white.

Because of this simple fact, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton did not seemingly arrive in Mount Clemens the very next day after the altercation to protest “racism,” and there is no “Million Man March” scheduled to protest the black-on-white crimes that occurred.

If a mob of whites were to do to innocent black victims what the black mob did to innocent white victims, the American people would not hear the end of it...

[which is where the media, again, plays a part. Heard about this on TV? Any doubts had the races been reversed you would have? {think: Jena, Louisiana}. Worse than the media's duplicity is the fact that we, today, in America, have laws on the books literally establishing special 'protected classes' based on race {as well as sexual orientation}. What would Dr. King make of this? How much longer will we tolerate it? It matters who you elect.]

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Brown Comes through...
[credit where due;]

There were questions surrounding Gordon Brown when he became Great Britain's Prime Minister. Taking office with echoes of "lap dog" following his predecessor Tony Blair, many wondered just how committed Brown would be to the "Special Relationship" between the US and Great Britain and whether he would initiate a more independent course in foreign affairs.

Brown may yet eschew supporting the US on many issues. But on increasing sanctions on Iran and sending additional troops to Afghanistan - two things the US devoutly wished Brown would accede to - the British Prime Minister has come through.

Brown has also promised to stick with Bush on Iraq - something of a surprise but perhaps a little dose of reality about the situation there, and the consequences of failure, added some 'clarity'...

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[HT:GC]

Odierno Tells Senate U.S. Military Headed in Right Direction in Iraq

The United States “is not out of the woods yet” in Iraq, but the nation is headed in the right direction, the man nominated to be the next Multinational Force Iraq commander said today.

Odierno, who served as Multinational Corps Iraq commander until October 2007, said Iraq has made significant progress, specifically over the past 18 months. “I believe a self-reliant government of Iraq that is stable, one that is committed to governance and protecting its own people and serving all its people, a place that's denied as a safe haven for terrorists and extremists and one that is integrated into the international community and a partner of the war on terror is absolutely possible in Iraq,” he said. “And I think it's closer today than it has been.”

Odierno told the senators that he would not make sweeping pronouncements about Iraq, but he did say that, generally, the increased capability of the Iraqi security forces has been extremely important to progress here.

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The Airline Bomb Plot

[that was so nearly the 'Airline Bomb-ing']

...Here's another hypothetical: Would this conversation be different today if in August 2006 seven airliners had taken off from Terminal 3 at Heathrow Airport, bound for the U.S. and Canada and each carrying about 250 passengers, and then blew up over the Atlantic Ocean? [snip]

The view that 9/11 "changed everything" did not hold up under the weight of our politics. Divisions re-emerged between Democrats and Republicans, in office and on the streets. These fights reignited over the Patriot Act, Guantanamo and the warrantless wiretap bill (or "FISA" revision). These arguers stopped to stare momentarily at their televisions when Islamic terrorists succeeded in mass murder in the 2004 Madrid train bombing and the 2005 London subway bombing, but quickly returned to partisan grandstanding... [snip]

The arrests of the men [before they could execute their crime {suicide bombers are not deterable, they must be interdicted}] was the result of broad and prolonged surveillance. For months, the suspects were bugged, photographed and wiretapped. Here in the U.S., our politics has spent much of the year unable to vote into law the wiretap bill, which is bogged down, incredibly, over giving retrospective legal immunity to telecom companies that helped the government monitor calls - originating overseas...[snip]

Philip Bobbitt, author of the just released and thought-provoking book, "Terror and Consent," has written that court warrants are "a useful standard for surveillance designed to prove guilt, not to learn the identity of people who may be planning atrocities."

Planning atrocities is precisely the point.

[Recommended >]

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Canada's 'Human Rights' Inquisition Comes After Stein

Typically one does not associate the word inquisition with our neighbors up north in Canada, and yet that is pretty much what is going on there to conservative author and columnist Mark Steyn. Minus the violence, Steyn is being subjected to a twisted court system that always finds defendants guilty and conducts itself in an utterly capricious way.

Steyn's crime? Daring to criticize radical Islam. For his temerity, Steyn and the Canadian magazine Maclean's (which printed Steyn's essay, an excerpt from his book) are being put on trial by the "human rights commission" of British Columbia, one of several such bodies both Steyn and Maclean's have been forced to deal with by the Canadian Islamic Congress.

What to do about this outrage? The editors at National Review have a few suggestions...

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NBC Claimed Bush Allowed Al-Qaeda in Iraq Before War, Media Now Ignore Pre-War Presence

[HT:MS]
While it is currently conventional wisdom in the media that there was no Al-Qaeda presence in Iraq before the 2003 invasion, as evidenced by the media's failure to correct Barack Obama's recent claim that "there was no such thing as Al-Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq."

In fact, four years ago, the NBC Nightly News claimed not only that there was an Al-Qaeda presence in Iraq before the invasion, busy plotting attacks against Europe, but that the Bush administration intentionally "passed up several opportunities" to attack terrorist bases in Iraq "long before the war" in 2002 because of fear it would "undercut its case" for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. (Transcripts follow)

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Irish voters reject EU power grab

The Treaty of Lisbon, in effect a new constitution for the European Union intended to add to the power of EU bureaucrats at the expense of democratically elected national governments, was rejected by Irish voters yesterday. Predictably, the New York Times is disappointed. [snip]

"I think the Irish prime minister, Brian Cowen, will have to explain himself at the summit." [?]

The arguments used to advocate the treaty to Irish voters betray a mentality common to welfare states: we subsidized you, so now give us political power... [snip]

In fact, as many observers have noted, the key to Ireland's stunning economic growth the last two decades was not EU subsidies (handed out to countries that are poorer than the EU average - welfare, in other words), but rather radical tax cuts and deregulation, which ignited the "Celtic tiger" phenomenon, propelling the Irish to genuine prosperity. Benjamin Powell of the Goldwater Institute explains: [see piece for list of impressive stats > ][snip]

Apparently the Irish voters, having learned from their experience with a low taxes and reasonable regulation, are not anxious to return to a system premised on the notion that bureaucrats must regulate everything in detail, and taxes must be high.

Needless to say, the EU will press on with its power grab, regardless of voters' wishes...

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Thabo Mbeki blocks UN Zimbabwe agenda

Harare - The horrors of Zimbabwe's political violence will not feature on the agenda of the UN Security Council meeting overnight after South African President Thabo Mbeki blocked an attempt to put the crisis on the program.

The Security Council will now discuss only the humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe, separating it from the ongoing political violence in the lead-up to the presidential runoff. (Snip) The US and Britain were furious with South Africa's block at the UN, achieved with Russia's help...

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Study: UN Global Warming Forecast Violates Accepted Principles

"These dire predictions are not the result of scientific forecasting," said J. Scott Armstrong, an internationally known expert in forecasting methods from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who co-authored the NCPA study. "Rather, they are opinions derived from a political process."

The most accepted forecasting methods were determined by internationally-known experts and expert reviewers and are available in the Principles of Forecasting handbook. These principles were designed to be applicable to making forecasts about diverse physical, social and economic phenomena. The NCPA study applied these forecasting principles to audit 2007's Fourth Assessment Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which predicted big increases in average world temperature by 2100. The audit found that:

• Out of 140 forecasting principles, 127 are relevant to the procedures used to arrive at the climate projections in the IPCC report;
• Of these, the IPCC report clearly violated almost half (60);
• An additional 12 forecasting principles appear to be violated, and there is insufficient information in the report to assess the use of 38 others; therefore
• Only 17 out of 127 applicable forecasting principles can be shown to have been followed by the IPCC.

The authors also note that the IPCC forecasters themselves are part of the unreliability problem, as political considerations influenced all stages of the IPCC process, including writing the final version expressly to reflect the language negotiated by the political appointees to the IPCC.

"As a result of these violations of forecasting principles, the forecasts in the IPCC report are invalid," says Armstrong. "There is no scientific forecast supporting the widespread belief in dangerous human-caused ‘global warming.' In fact, it has yet to be demonstrated that long-term forecasting of climate is possible at all."

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Oil companies spend more on taxes than on oil supply development

... Over the last several the major oil companies have been driven away from investing money in future exploration and production. The so-called Supermajors, Exxon, BP, Shell, Chevron. Conoco, and Total have paid more in taxes than they have invested in the oil business. For the three year period, 2005 to 2007 these companies have paid $292 billion in taxes and invested $265 billion in capital projects... [snip]

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Sarkozy proposes EU cut in fuel tax

[HT:PS]
Paris - President Nicolas Sarkozy of France on Tuesday proposed cutting fuel taxes Europe-wide, responding to economic discontent that has prompted French fishermen to mount protests now spreading to other European shores and sectors. Sarkozy urged the European Union to suspend part of the value-added tax on fuel to counter rising crude oil prices that have risen repeatedly to new highs in recent weeks. For more than two weeks, angry fishermen have blocked ports across France to protest rising fuel prices...

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A Supreme Error

Upon reading the opinion in Boumediene v Bush, one must conclude that the majority knew where they wanted to go and simply had to figure out how to get there. The trip was not a pretty one.

How could it be when the justices seemingly wrote a map based on ideas cherry picked from over 400 years of established law and backfilled with justifications to create a new right for alien combatants that Americans themselves do not enjoy?

...as Justice Scalia pointed out in his dissent – they for the first time in our nation’s history, conferred a Constitutional right of habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war – a broader right than has been given to our own citizens. The court majority did so acknowledging that they could find no precedent to confer such a right to alien enemies not within sovereign U.S. territory...

...It is truly stunning that this court has seen fit to arrogate unto itself a role in the most important issue facing any country, self-defense, in a case in which Congress has in fact repeatedly acted. This was not a case where Congress did not set the rules; it did. But the court still decided – in the face of overwhelming precedent to the contrary – to intervene...

I also find it just a tad ironic that in a case involving habeas corpus, which literally means that one must produce a body (or person) before a court to explain the basis on which that person is being detained, the decision of this court may mean more fallen bodies in the defense of a Constitution some of these justices ignored...

People can disagree over whether Congress got it right, but at least members have to face the voters. What remedy do people have now if they don’t like the court’s decision? None. If that thought is not enough to cause concerned citizens to turn out on Election Day to elect a new president, then I don’t know what will be.

[we've a legal-system crisis in this country that must be addressed]

[Recommended > ]

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Let’s Get Something Straight

[HT:MN]
I liked Tim Russert, even though I thought his BS gotcha nonsense was thorough idiocy and not helping the debate at all. He was a likable guy- friendly, always smiling. I understand it is a loss for the beltway folks, and he had a lot of really good friends and meant a lot to people, and I would be dishonest if I failed to mention that I feel sad by his passing.

But let’s get something straight- what I am watching right now on the cable news shows is indicative of the problem- no clearer demonstration of the fact that they consider themselves to be players and the insiders and, well, part of the village, is needed. This is precisely the problem. They have walked the corridors of power so long that they honestly think they are the story. It is creepy and sick and the reason politicians get away with all the crap they get away with these days.

Tim Russert was a newsman. He was not the Pope. This is not the JFK assassination, or Reagan’s death, or the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. A newsman died. We know you miss him, but please shut up and get back to work.

*** Update ***

This post was not an attack on Russert, someone I have said I liked and will miss. It is a sad situation- he was clearly widely loved, and his death is a terrible loss for his family and friends. But that is beside the point, as this post was a commentary on the coverage of his passing, which seems to me, at least, to be indicative of a larger problem.

On the upside of the coverage, though, is this observation that at least MSNBC will not be running prison reality shows all weekend.

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America's generosity is unmatched
[a recent topic of discussion]

... a publication called the Index of Global Philanthropy, which is produced annually by the Center for Global Prosperity at the Hudson Institute in Washington. This is the just released third annual edition of this index. It produces a unique snapshot portraying the full extent of American generosity to developing countries, by amount and by source.

Usually when the question of aid to the developing world arises, we think of government funds. But this index shows that, whereas it may be the rule in the rest of the industrialized world that most aid is government aid, in our country this isn't the case. Most of the contributions that Americans make abroad are private and voluntary. And they are large.

In 2006, the latest year for which data is available, the index reports that Americans contributed privately and voluntarily $34.8 billion to individuals and organizations in developing countries.

Of particular interest in this year's index is the $8.8 billion reported from religious organizations. [snip] The average contribution of congregations was $10,700. To put this in some kind of perspective, the $8.8 billion in giving from American religious institutions [alone] to developing countries was $1.5 billion more than the total giving from all private sources in 30 of the world's major industrialized democratic countries - combined...

[about once a year we'll get some media-hyped story about a prominent European stating how selfish Americans are - sighting government foreign aid as a % of GDP - without ever mentioning that government philanthropy isn't the American model (as it is Europe's). Next time someone tries to pull this stunt might I suggest you ask to compare private donate rates: Americans routinely embarrass all other governments - to say noting of those nations' private giving (why should they? that's what their governments are for...}]

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WATER DISCOVERED ON MARS

.
Domestic Day... clearing out a few accumulated 'other' stories...
.

Stalled in the USA: Europe's Small Cars
When automakers reported how many cars they moved in the U.S. in May, small fuel-sippers were the clear favorites. Ford Motor (F) sold 53% more Focus compacts than it did a year ago, while Nissan's (NSANY) tiny Versa sold 15% more. And Volvo (F), Volkswagen (VLKAY), and BMW? All sold fewer of their small models.

A head-scratcher, that. European carmakers should be cleaning up. After all, small cars rule the road on the Continent, where the ancient horse and buggy infrastructure virtually requires smaller cars. But here's the dirty secret: Volvo, VW, BMW, and their peers are limiting the supply of some of their cars in the U.S. because they aren't profitable.

Earl J. Hesterberg, chief executive of Group 1 Automotive (GPI), a Houston megadealer with two Volvo stores, says he could sell 5 to 10 times as many S40 compact sedans if Volvo reinstated a lease deal it dropped in March to suppress sales. But "there isn't a scenario where we can sell cars under $30,000 at a profit," says Volvo Cars of North America President Doug Speck. [snip]

While a 13% dollar to euro exchange rate shift hasn't helped, it's high labor costs that are the primary culprit: in Europe unions remain powerful...

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MOVIN' TO MEXICO
[HT:SF]
U.S. automakers are closing plants and slashing jobs in Michigan, Ohio and other U.S. union havens, in favor of non-union, foreign places, like Mexico and China. Past deals with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union have saddled U.S. companies with such high costs that they can no longer make cars here and compete on a global market:

• U.S. carmakers pay their workers an average of about $73 an hour in wages and benefits -- way more than others.
• According to the Center for Automotive Research, there's a $16.15 per hour gap between what Detroit's Big 3 pay workers and what Toyota pays workers in the United States.
• Add to that a $5 billion a year difference in health care and other retirement costs, totaling thousands of dollars in extra costs on every car sold, and U.S. automakers operate at about a $12 billion a year disadvantage.
• From 1999 to 2007 alone, the United States lost 281,500 auto-related jobs, or 25 percent of the total.

Though little noted, last year was a watershed for U.S. carmakers:

• For the first time, foreign producers in the United States made more cars -- 54 percent of the total -- than the former Big Three.
• As recently as the 1980s, Ford, Chrysler and GM made 73 percent of all cars here.

Ford's recent investment of $3 billion in two auto plants near Mexico City is the largest foreign company investment ever in Mexico. Ford's move to Mexico should be a warning to the UAW, which has seen its membership shrink from 1.5 million in 1979 to about 500,000 today. The decline of Ford, GM or Chrysler is bad news for the United States -- and the UAW has played a major part in it.

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The Threat to the Car
Recent evidence that automobile use is declining in America and that some Americans are making significant -- and in some cases not readily reversible -- changes in their lives because of escalating gas prices should be worrisome signs for those who love liberty. (Snip)

Methods governments can use to do this include placing constraints on parking availability, forbidding taxpayers from using certain lanes of the highway (or even certain highways) unless they agree to carpool or ride a bus, and imposing excessive gas taxes or road tolls...
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Trip home highlights changes brought by illegal immigration
Two weekends ago I was excited about attending my nephew's high school graduation in my hometown of El Paso, Texas, just across the Rio Grande from Juarez, Mexico.

Things have changed a lot.

The decision to allow students from Juarez had changed the standards and academic pride of the school, explained my nephew sadly. English is no longer the primary spoken or preferred language in El Paso, Texas. At the graduation ceremony for the class of 2008, one of the opening announcements was that specific parts of the ceremony would be in Spanish only... [snip]

The Boy Scouts paraded in with the flag. Guests were asked to stand. My family and I placed our hands over our heart to recite the Pledge to the Flag, as we had done so many times during our school years. However, many people in front and all around us refused to stand and continued to talk and conducted themselves with complete disrespect for the flag and the Pledge that only American citizens understand and appreciate.

It was then that I understood my nephew's sadness regarding the erosion of his rights as a citizen when the overwhelming majority of his classmates were not U.S. citizens...

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Chrysler Building on the Block
The latest Big Apple trophy being coveted by oil-rich sovereign wealth funds is the landmark Chrysler Building. Sources say the super-rich Abu Dhabi Investment Council is negotiating an $800 million deal for a 75 percent stake in the Art Deco treasure that has defined the Midtown skyline since 1930. (Snip) The deal follows last month's sale of the GM Building and three other Macklowe/Equity Portfolio properties for $3.95 billion to a group of investors including the wealth funds of Kuwait and Qatar...
[the bright side? we're getting our money back...]
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Sex ed planned for fourth graders
The Springfield School District plans to introduce sex education to fourth-graders next school year, a grade younger than its current practice. “Kids are developing a little more rapidly,” said Kathy Hulcher, who oversees health education for the district and helped lead a committee that re-evaluated the sex education curriculum.
[universal vouchers]
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Africentric school to open in 2009
After years of debate that has divided communities of every colour, Toronto's public school board voted tonight to open an Africentric alternative school in September 2009. The junior kindergarten to Grade 5 school – believed to be a first in Canada – is expected to help tackle a 40 per cent dropout rate among black students. Approved by a 13-8 vote after a heated debate in which one trustee called another a racist, the school will be located in an empty wing of Sheppard Public School...
[segregation - how progressive]
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PUTTING CHILDREN LAST
[HT:JK]
Congress have finally found a federal program they want to eliminate: the four-year-old Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. Consider:

• The Opportunity Scholarship Program provides vouchers to about 2,000 low-income children so they can attend religious or other private schools.
• More than 80 percent of the voucher recipients are black and most of the rest Hispanic; their average income is about $23,000 a year.
• The budget for the experimental program is $18 million, or about what the U.S. Department of Education spends every hour and a half.
•The $18 million allocated to the program does not come out of the District school budget; Congress appropriates extra money for the vouchers.

Also:

• The $7,500 voucher per child is a bargain for taxpayers because it costs the public schools about 50 percent more, or $13,000 a year, to educate a child in the public schools.
• D.C. schools are among the worst in the nation; in 2007, D.C. public schools ranked last in math scores and second-to-last in reading scores for all urban public school systems on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
• More than 90 percent of the families express high satisfaction with the program, according to researchers at Georgetown University.

The fight to eliminate this program has nothing to do with saving money, but a lot to do with election year politics. The teachers unions have put out the word to Congress that they want all vouchers for private schools that compete with their monopoly system shut down. Unions are afraid the voucher program will succeed, and show that there is a genuine alternative to the national scandal that are most inner-city public schools.

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Media Ignore That Gagging Sound from Canada
Usually, when a journalist is censored in a Western nation, American news organizations respond with collective outrage. But as a major attack on press freedom unfolds in Canada, America’s mainstream media are silent.

Neither the TV networks nor the major newspapers have reported on hearings last week at what amounts to a Stalinesque show trial in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Mark Steyn, a Canadian journalist who now lives in New Hampshire and whose column appears in National Review magazine as well as several U.S. and Canadian newspapers, is facing charges before British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal.

The evidence? A 5,000-word excerpt of Steyn’s book America Alone that was carried as an article.

His crime? Spreading “hatred”...
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Celebrate Radio Independence Day
House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), Congressmen Mike Pence (R-IN), Greg Walden (R-OR) and Trent Franks (R-AZ), syndicated radio talk show host Laura Ingraham and President of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist in declaring this July 4th to be Radio Independence Day, and called for Congress to allow a full up or down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act (BFA).

The BFA will kill once and for all the Fairness Doctrine, the onerous governmental policy that served to stifle free speech on the radio airwaves for four decades. Twenty-one years since its repeal, radio has flourished on the air, but some in Congress have been seeking to again reinstatement the restrictions of the Fairness Doctrine.

The BFA is currently stuck in committee. A discharge petition has been started to allow it to the floor for a full vote, but it has only 194 of the needed 218 signatures.

'Allow a full up or down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act'
Your Congressman > https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml

Be sure to also check out the MRC's Culture and Media Institute study, "Unmasking the Myths Behind the Fairness Doctrine"

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ABCNews.com: Republicans 'Fueling Anger' with Blockage of New Oil Tax

Blame do-nothing Republicans for high gas prices. That was the impression visitors to ABCNews.com got this afternoon.

Among the "top headlines" lineup Web site editors included a story on "Fueling Anger" with the teaser headline: "Rejected! Big Oil Tax Gets Shelved." [see related post about CBSNews.com's bias here]

The accompanying caption to the ABC photo illustration read, "With prices soaring, GOP halts Democrats' wide-ranging energy plan."

The article itself, by writer Z. Byron Wolf, was front-loaded with bias, slamming Republicans for their filibuster of a new windfall profits tax measure while dismissing the GOP's energy production plan as 'ineffective'...

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LOOK FOR THE UNION LABEL
What do the farm bill, the cap-and-trade global warming bill, the clean water bill, the housing bailout bill and the school construction bill all have in common? In each one and countless others the Democratic majority in Congress has inserted "prevailing-wage" requirements that amount to a super-minimum wage, says the Wall Street Journal.

We're speaking of Davis-Bacon, the 1931 law that set a floor on wages in part to price black and Mexican workers out of the work. Today, its main impact is to require de facto union wages. For example:

• A Heritage Foundation analysis of wage data reports that in many cities the mandated Davis-Bacon wage is twice as high as the market wage.
• In Nassau-Suffolk in New York, for example, Davis-Bacon requires a minimum wage for brickmasons of $49.67 an hour, though the more common area wage for that work is $25.50.
• Many reputable studies have estimated that Davis-Bacon inflates federal construction costs by anywhere from 5 percent to 39 percent.
• America could be building about 25 percent more bridges and roads by repealing Davis-Bacon.
• A 2001 study by economists Daniel Kessler of Stanford and Lawrence Katz of Harvard found that when states repeal their Davis-Bacon laws, it is followed by an appreciable narrowing of the black/nonblack wage differential for construction workers.

Barack Obama has proposed a new taxpayer-supported $60 billion infrastructure bank that would siphon billions off to his union friends by mandating Davis-Bacon. That's "change," -- right out of taxpayer pockets, says the Journal.
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Tribune Co. Plans Sharp Cutbacks at Papers
[HT:MC]
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA Tribune Company newspapers like The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune will quickly cut costs - by printing fewer papers and employing fewer journalists - top company executives said on Thursday.
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Picking Judges
If you ask Americans what issues matter most to them in choosing a president, the candidate's judicial philosophy is not likely to make it into the top 10. But a president's power to nominate judges is, in fact, one of his most powerful tools -- and often leaves a legacy that lasts far longer than any policy initiative. President Dwight Eisenhower was no liberal activist, but his appointment of Earl Warren as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court dramatically shifted the nation leftward for decades on everything from criminal justice to separation of church and state..
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Media Should Think ‘Maybe We’re Just Doing This Wrong’
Media coverage of the economy in recent months should make journalists wonder what kind of job they're doing, according to Business & Media Institute Vice President Dan Gainor.

"‘If it bleeds it leads' has always been one theory. That only works up to a point," Gainor told Fox Business Network host Neil Cavuto June 2. "When you are actually spinning the results so much so that they're more negative than the worst economic time period in American history, well then you really have to sit back and think, ‘Maybe we're just doing this wrong.'"

"The media coverage [of] Bear Stearns [was] more than four times more negative than when the stock market lost 30 percent in six days," Gainor said, referring to findings published in a new BMI report, "The Great Media Depression."

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Warning issued for West Nile virus
California
Summer is almost here, and with the arrival of warm weather comes the potential for West Nile virus. California's Department of Public Health has issued a warning urging people to protect themselves from the mosquito bites that transmit West Nile by ...
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PG&E to offset state Dems' emissions
Sacramento - California Democrats have recruited Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to offset carbon emissions related to the national party convention this summer. The state's largest utility will buy $8,440 worth of carbon credits that will come from a Northern California redwood forest. (Snip) California's is the first Democratic delegation to announce such an arrangement as part of a national push by the Democratic Party to reduce or offset carbon output at its convention...
[the religion spreads...]
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Losing the Information War with Amendment 56
The Democrats are angry.

Despite investing enormous effort undermining the military, things are going fairly well in Iraq. The anti-Bush themes of an "Iraqi quagmire" and "surge failure" were premature, and all the congressional show hearings, the choreographed Code Pink performance art and the MoveOn.org smears were for naught. The president and the military [eventually] did it right, and the Democrats got it wrong.

Time for a little vengeance on the Pentagon.

The House passed Amendment 56 to the Defense Authorization Act for FY 2009, prohibiting the Department of Defense from engaging in "publicity" programs, banning funding for such programs and calling for an investigation by the Government Accounting Office.

The three sponsors of the Bill, Representatives Hodes, DeFazio and DeLauro, vote along party lines. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, they hold to their perspective that Iraq is a failure and the American people and the media have been deceived. [snip]

In the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people, the Democrats work hard to silence information that undermines their agenda and they are winning. While the military fights for victory, Democrats plot their defeat, not on the battlefield, but in the minds of the very citizens they serve. In this, they diminish us as a nation and inch us ever closer to defeat.

The political fight for America's access to the truth, whatever the source, is one battle the military cannot fight for us. They must remain apolitical. This is a fight we, the people, must win for them.

[long, but Highly Recommended as an example of the depths politicians will stoop to acquire power > ]
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Dems Use Edgy Films to Rally Youth Voters
[HT:MN]
A stunning 20-something woman hooks up with a seemingly innocent guy at a rowdy singles bar. Hot foreplay starts on the cab ride home and progresses into the bedroom. That is until, while searching for a condom in the bedside table, she sees a photo signed "Thanks for your support!" from Republican candidate John McCain. Horrified, she bolts, dropping her bag and spilling a campaign button on the sidewalk: "I only sleep with Democrats."
[the party of tolerance and inclusion]
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Face of Defense: Wounded Warrior Leads Medical Battalion

When Army Cmmand Sgt. Maj. Mark Cornejo was wounded in Iraq, he had to return stateside for medical treatment, reluctantly leaving his comrades and mission behind.

But one thing that never left him was his desire to serve.

After three months of in-patient treatment and more than five months in rehabilitation at Brooke Army Medical Center here, Cornejo assumed responsibility for 187th Medical Battalion from Army Master Sgt. Dwight Wafford during a May 13 ceremony at the battalion headquarters here.

“Giving up never entered my thought process,” Cornejo said, speaking of his recovery. “It wasn’t ‘if,’ it was ‘when’ I was going to get back. I just wanted to know how fast I could get fixed so I could get back.”

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Taliban bombed 'to brink of defeat'

[HT:SK]
Kabul - Missions by coalition forces and air strikes by unmanned drones have ''decapitated'' the Taliban and brought the terror movement to the brink of defeat in Afghanistan, military leaders said yesterday. The commander of British forces in Afghanistan told London's Daily Telegraph that new ''precise, surgical'' tactics had killed scores of insurgent leaders and made it extremely difficult for Pakistan-based Taliban leaders to operate...

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France offers Iraq rebuilding aid

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is in Iraq to offer help in rebuilding the country and promoting national reconciliation. Mr Kouchner, whose visit began in the southern city of Nasiriya, is holding talks with senior officials. France was one of the fiercest critics of the 2003 US-led invasion, and this is Mr Kouchner's second visit to Iraq in less than a year.

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Islamists charged over plots

Madrid - A Spanish court charged 11 Islamists today with offences related to suicide bombings which it said they had been planning in Barcelona and Germany. A High Court document said 10 of the men had been on the brink of carrying out suicide bombings on public transport in Barcelona when they were arrested in Spain's second-largest city in January.

[G.W.O.T.]

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Chinese hack computers at congressman's office

WASHINGTON — A Virginia congressman said today the FBI has found that four of his government computers have been hacked by sources working out of China. In remarks prepared for delivery this afternoon, Rep. Frank Wolf says he has been told by the FBI that four computers in his personal office were compromised. The Virginia Republican says that similar incidents — also originating from China — have taken place on computers of other members of Congress and at least one House committee...

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For the Record: The U.N. Partners With Terror

Two English language Arab news outlets reported this week that the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has partnered with the Saudi-based International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO). [snip]

"The IIRO-PHL is a source of funding for the al Qaida-affiliated ASG. IIRO-PHL has served as a liaison for the ASG with other Islamic extremist groups. A former ASG member in the Philippines familiar with IIRO operations in the country reported that a limited amount of foreign IIRO funding goes to legitimate projects and the rest is directed to terrorist operations. These terrorist groups are also on the United Nations 1267 Committee's consolidated list of individuals and entities associated with the Taliban, al Qaida and/or Usama Bin Ladin."

IPT readers should recall that stateside, the self-proclaimed prominent Islamic "civil rights" group, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), also has a history of "partnering" with IIRO, receiving close to $30,000 from the terrorist-linked entity.

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NYT 1993: ' Study of Greenland Ice Finds Rapid Change in Past Climate'

Written by Walter Sullivan, "Study of Greenland Ice Finds Rapid Change in Past Climate" addressed findings that suggest "the period of stable climate in which human civilization has flourished might be unusual, and that the current climate may get either warmer or colder much more quickly than had been believed -- in spans of decades or even less."

Doesn't sound like today's hysterical press claims concerning global warming, does it? Neither does this:

The new studies found that the average global temperature can change as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit in a couple of decades during interglacial periods, [Dr. J. W. C. White of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research of the University of Colorado] said. The current average global temperature is 59 degrees Fahrenheit.

You mean natural forces -- i.e. unrelated to anything done by man -- can create temperature swings of 18 degrees in a couple of decades? And folks like Nobel Laureate Al Gore, along with most in the media and an overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress are advocating economically destabilizing legislation all because temperatures have risen about one degree in the past 150 years?

But there was more...

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Energy

.
Free the offshore drillers
Rep. John Peterson (R-PA) has introduced an amendment to s spending bill that would free up offshore drilling more than 50 miles off our coast, enabling American companies to drill in waters already being exploited by the Chinese, among others.

"For 27 years, Congress has deliberately locked up vast offshore oil and natural gas reserves," Peterson said, according to USA Today. "With the price at the pump increasing daily - with no end in sight - and the cost of natural gas trading at record levels, Congress needs to unlock these reserves."

Let us watch very carefully for those who vote to restrict oil supplies (and thereby continue raising prices). We have an election coming up and gasoline prices are an issue, in case you haven't noticed.
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House Subcommittee Rejects Plan to Open U.S. Waters to More Oil Exploration
Washington - A House subcommittee has rejected a Republican-led effort to open up more U.S. coastal waters to oil exploration. Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., spearheaded the effort. His proposal would open up U.S. waters between 50 and 200 miles off shore for drilling. The first 50 miles off shore would be left alone. But the plan failed Wednesday on a 9-6, party-line vote...
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[meanwhile...]

China's Drilling for Oil in America's Backyard
House Republicans want the American people to know that right now -- around 60 miles off the coast of Key West, Fla. -- China is drilling for oil, thanks to a lease issued by Cuba. But 1,200 miles north of Key West, Democrats in Washington are blocking the United States from conducting its own environmentally-safe oil and gas exploration in similar U.S. coastal areas (Snip)

"Do congressional Democrats actually believe China has more ingenuity and more concern for the environment than the United States?"

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CBS Blames Gas Prices In GM Closures, Disregards Expensive Union Labor

High gas prices strike again, says the "CBS Evening News."

The "Evening News" blamed surging gas prices and General Motors reluctance to produce "more fuel-efficient vehicles" for closure of several plants, including one in Janesville, Wisc.

But Bowers omitted one detail: GM (NYSE:GM), Ford (NYSE:F) and Chrysler all have ties to the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, which forces those manufacturers into collective bargaining agreements with very expensive labor costs.

And, the foreign automakers that sell "more fuel-efficient vehicles" - which include Toyota (NYSE:TM) (opening a plant in Tupelo, Miss.), Honda (NYSE:HMC) (Greensburg, Ind.), Volkswagen (FRA:VOW) (tAlabama) and KIA (SEO:000270) (West Point, Ga.) - are building their new plants in places where the UAW doesn't have a presence and won't make them less competitive by raising overhead costs.

As an August 2007 Investor's Business Daily editorial pointed out, unions are a principal reason many Americans have lost jobs. "[I]t's hard to fathom how a middle class could be created by an institution that has ... forced many Americans out of the labor force because of the high wages it has compelled businesses, through the power of its government protection, to pay," the editorial said.

[the only arena labor unions don't spell the death of organizations is where there's no competition - say, like government]

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Newsweek shills for Obama

Presumptive GOP nominee John McCain granted an interview to Newsweek’s Jon Meacham and Holly Bailey, and in the first sign of a long, uphill campaign with the media, McCain was asked how he could defeat such a "hugely gifted politician"?

[what bias?]

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MSNBC: 'Old-Fashioned' McCain vs. 'Centrist' Obama 'Helping People'

Mitchell cast the battle of the candidates' tax plans as McCain's "old-fashioned" [?] supply-side economics [ah, I believe it's Keynsian economics that's considered old, which supply-side has displaced - close though Andria] versus Obama's [ironically, Keynsian] "mainstream [?], centrist"[??] plans that "do help people" while responsibly "paying for everything."[??? !][layer upon layer...]

View video here.
[View new MSNBC logo here:

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.
Chicago Daily Herald: Vote for Obama or You're a Racist

The Daily Herald, a Chicago area paper, waxed triumphant over the ascendancy of Barack Obama to the assumed position as the Democratic Party nominee for the presidency today. (Snip) Of course, the Herald's piece is centered on America's past as a pretext to say that Obama might somehow deserve to become president because of our past history of oppression.

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La. governor stirs GOP imaginations

Give Bobby Jindal some dap.

Asked what color he is he says, "Red, white and blue."

[anyone unfamiliar, note the name - you'll be hearing it in the future]

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Personal carbon credits: the trick
[UK]
Get out your gas masks and tin hats. We are under attack from a noxious army of doom-troopers demanding that we treat climate change as a rerun of the Second World War. In the latest move to militarise everyday life, the Environmental Audit Committee of MPs has seriously proposed energy rationing, aka “personal carbon credits”. What next? Little (green) Hitlers patrolling the streets yelling “Put that high-energy light out!”?
[yes]
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San Francisco Schools' Special Salute

California

Wonder why San Francisco has a reputation as the American left's most intolerant city?

Consider the fact that concerned San Francisco citizens are now gathering signatures for a ballot measure to get the school board to overturn a 2006 vote which shut down the 90-year-old Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program. ['ROTC', snip]

When the board was preparing to vote to kill the program, Yu told me, "I thought, no way is the board going to do that." There were 1,600 students enrolled -- in a program supported by parents and educators, in part because it has provided strong role models for minority teens. When the board turned a deaf ear to the pleas of the many people who turned up at public meetings to save the program, Yu said, it "galvanized me." [snip]

You see, the San Francisco school board only recognizes the right to expression with which it agrees. Disagree, and the board will shut you down. If students suffer -- well, that's politics...

[as usual, that city just makes your proud-all-over to be a Californian]

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There Is a Military Solution to Terror

Sadr City in Baghdad, the northeastern districts of Sri Lanka and the Guaviare province of Colombia have little in common culturally, historically or politically. But they are crucial reference points on a global map in which long-running insurgencies suddenly find themselves on the verge of defeat.

For the week of May 16-23, there were 300 "violent incidents" in Iraq. That's down from 1,600 last June and the lowest recorded since March 2004. Al Qaeda has been crushed by a combination of U.S. arms and Sunni tribal resistance. On the Shiite side, Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army was routed by Iraqi troops in Basra and later crumbled in its Sadr City stronghold.

In Colombia, the 44-year-old FARC guerrilla movement is now at its lowest ebb. Three of its top commanders died in March, and the number of FARC attacks is down by more than two-thirds since 2002. In the face of a stepped-up campaign by the Colombian military (funded, equipped and trained by the U.S.), the group is now experiencing mass desertions. Former FARC leaders describe a movement that is losing any semblance of ideological coherence and operational effectiveness.

In Sri Lanka, a military offensive by the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has wrested control of seven of the nine districts previously held by the rebel group LTTE, better known as the Tamil Tigers. Mr. Rajapaksa now promises victory by the end of the year, even as the Tigers continue to launch high-profile terrorist attacks.

All this is good news in its own right. Better yet, it explodes the mindless shibboleth that there is "no military solution" when it comes to dealing with insurgencies. On the contrary, it turns out that the best way to end an insurgency is, quite simply, to beat it.

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Cocky Ignorance

Now that Senator Barack Obama has become the Democrats' nominee for President of the United States, to the cheers of the media at home and abroad, he has written a letter to the Secretary of Defense, in a tone as if he is already President, addressing one of his subordinates. The letter ends: "I look forward to your swift response."

With wars going on in both Iraq and Afghanistan, a Secretary of Defense might have some other things to look after, before making a "swift response" to a political candidate. Because of the widely publicized statistic that suicide rates among American troops have gone up, Senator Obama says he wants the Secretary of Defense to tell him, swiftly:

"What changes will you make... [snip]
"What training has the Pentagon provided... [snip]
"What assistance are you providing... [snip]
"What programs has the Pentagon implemented... [snip]

What has been widely publicized in the media is that suicides among American troops have gone up. What has not been widely publicized is that this higher suicide rate is still not as high as the suicide rate among demographically comparable U.S. civilians...

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[Barry might want to receive this blog - could have saved a stamp;

FLASHBACK 5/30/08:

Army Deploys Prevention Programs to Combat Soldier Suicides
WASHINGTON, May 29, 2008 - The Army is deploying a multitude of prevention programs as part of efforts to stop soldiers from taking their own lives, senior Army officials said
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[quick points on this topic, as it's getting wide MSM coverage reporting the 108-115 suicides (reports have varied) in '07 without any accompanying context whatsoever. Unimportantly (but interesting) is that Russia's military suicides numbered 341 for '07.

Importantly, our military's current level is below its peace-time average. And critically, the service member suicide rate is consistently below that of the 'general' US population for the same age group. None of which makes any rate acceptable - but does put the lie to the epidemic-because-we're-at-war subtext the much of the old media has been trying to imply.]

[HT:MN]

US: Iranian warhead blueprint 'alarming'

A ranking International Atomic Energy Agency official called Teheran's possession of a drawing showing how to make part of an atomic warhead "alarming" Thursday and said the onus is on Iran to prove it had not tried to develop nuclear arms, said diplomats attending a closed briefing. The US said the evidence detailed by IAEA Deputy Director General Olli Heinonen increased concerns that Teheran had tried to make such weapons...

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Networks That Hyped Haditha 'Massacre' Now Ignore Acquittal

The same network newscasts that hyped the 2005 "alleged massacre" by U.S. soldiers in Haditha are so far ignoring the acquittal on all charges of Lieutenant Andrew Grayson on Thursday. Grayson was accused of attempting to cover up details of the events surrounding a raid that lead to the death of 15 Iraqis. However, Grayson's acquittal was skipped by ABC's "Good Morning America," CBS's "Early Show" and NBC's "Today" show...

[this was the case the Murtha used to charge our Marines has 'murdered in cold blood'. I assume he'll be publishing a public apology any day now...]

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China experts warn of expanding space arms race

The United States and other Western nations have criticized China's efforts to build a presence in space, especially a test in January 2007 when it shot down one of its own aged satellites.

But in a book issued by the state-run China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, two People's Liberation Army experts said;

"Strategic confrontation in outer space is difficult to avoid. The development of outer space forces shows signs that a space arms race to seize the commanding heights is emerging," ... "We can say that weaponization of outer space ... is already unstoppable."

Chinese diplomats have repeatedly said they want stronger international rules to avoid an expensive and destabilizing arms race in space.

[of course they do: China doesn't honor any of its international agreement - it's the usual ploy to get the US to disarm itself, which will have many backers within this country...]

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WHO WILL WATCH THE WATCHMEN?

Organizations that send peacekeepers and aid workers to dangerous places are now facing a new concern: how to ensure the moral integrity of people who are supposed to be helping others. A report this week by the British branch of Save the Children underlines the problem:

• In a study carried out last year in southern Sudan, Haiti and Cote d'Ivoire, Save the Children found widespread sexual abuse of children, some as young as six, by aid workers -- particularly by UN peacekeepers.
• More than half the 250 boys and girls aged 10-17 they interviewed said they knew of such cases.
• The abuse remained widely underreported because most children were too frightened to come forward.

The UN has an unfortunate history of sex scandals, says the Economist:

• After a series of shocking rapes by Nepalese peacekeepers in Congo in 2003, then-UN secretary general Kofi Annan set up a committee to investigate.
• Following the Congo scandal, there have been serious incidents of alleged rape of civilians by UN peacekeepers each year: in Burundi (2004), Sudan (2005), Haiti (2006), Liberia (2006), and Cote d'Ivoire (2007).
• Last year the UN received 748 allegations of misconduct by its peacekeepers, 127 of which involved sexual exploitation and abuse.

The UN is in a difficult situation, because it has no legal jurisdiction over the alleged culprits; it can only dismiss alleged culprits and recommend their repatriation to their home country...

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Climate Debate Rejects Science For Ideology

I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere, but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.

Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems — from ocean currents to cloud formation — that no one fully understands.

Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.

Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation...

[as usual re: Dr. K, Recommended > ]

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Could Global Warming Obsessed Media Ever Consider CO2's Benefits?

With summer looming, and the nation experiencing its first heatwave of 2008, it certainly isn't surprising our global warming obsessed media have resumed the spread of climate hysteria as reported by my colleague Jeff Poor just a few hours ago.

Yet, given their willingness the past few months to discuss ethanol's connection to higher food prices, is it too much to ask for these same press outlets to offer a little balance by presenting the benefits of rising carbon dioxide levels along with the mythical costs?

Take for example Lawrence Solomon's truly astounding article published at Canada's Financial Post Saturday entitled "In Praise of CO2" :

Planet Earth is on a roll! GPP is way up. NPP is way up. To the surprise of those who have been bearish on the planet, the data shows global production has been steadily climbing to record levels, ones not seen since these measurements began.

GPP is Gross Primary Production, a measure of the daily output of the global biosphere -- the amount of new plant matter on land. NPP is Net Primary Production, an annual tally of the globe's production. Biomass is booming. The planet is the greenest it's been in decades, perhaps in centuries.

Hadn't heard about this? Well, why would you, for the other side of the supposedly horrific greenhouse aspect of increasing carbon dioxide levels is how plants are just loving it...

[a major component of the self-leveling aspect to the cycles of climate - Recommended > ]

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Gore Invests In Carbon Credit Company, Will Media Care?

On Wednesday, despite claims by one of Gore's representatives two months ago, it was revealed that his Generation Investment Management private equity fund has taken a 9.5 percent stake in a company that has one of the largest carbon credit portfolios in the world.

I'm sure every media outlet will be all over this development in the next 24 hours...

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An ominous warning that the rapid rise in oil prices has only just begun

The chief executive of the world's largest energy company has issued the most dire warning yet about the soaring the price of oil, predicting that it will hit $250 per barrel "in the foreseeable future". The forecast from Alexey Miller, the head of the Kremlin-owned gas giant Gazprom, would herald the arrival of £2-per-litre petrol and send shockwaves through the economy.

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Congress, Get Off Your Gas, and Drill

Look at the energy chaos that our government has allowed. While we remain at the mercy of oil companies, cartels and OPEC, our government has tied the hands of states and citizens to tap even temporary energy relief from our own land. Here are a few key vistas on the oil and energy landscape:

-- Though we have more oil in the shale of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming than there is in the Middle East (800 billion barrels), liberals and environmentalists have made it illegal to touch it.
-- It's illegal to drill in northern Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or off the coasts of Florida or California.
-- It's illegal to explore the Atlantic Ocean for oil.
-- It's illegal to explore the Pacific Ocean for oil.
-- We're not receiving leases anymore to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, while China, Venezuela and Cuba are.
-- We haven't built an oil refinery in more than 30 years and have reduced in half those we have.
-- American airlines are in danger of going out of business.
-- American truckers are being stranded on the sides of roads.
-- American commuters are going bankrupt trying to travel back and forth to work and are being forced to work locally for lower wages.
-- There's enough natural gas beneath America (406 trillion cubic feet) to heat every home in America for the next 150 years, but we can't tap it all.
-- We have the largest supply of coal in the world, but it's Germany who is planning to build 27 coal-fired power plants by 2020.
-- Etc.!

It's time to drill here and drill now. The petition is simple. It states, "We, therefore, the undersigned citizens of the United States, petition the U.S. Congress to act immediately to authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries."

[petition - there's several around, sign 'em all... ] > www.AmericanSolutions.com

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Federal contractors to check legal status of employees

-- President Bush has signed an executive order requiring contractors and others who do business with the federal government to make sure their employees can legally work in the U.S.

The federal government has had some embarrassing moments when illegal workers have been discovered to be working for contractors they've hired, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a news conference. For that reason it's trying to get its own house in order, Chertoff said.

"The federal government should lead by example and not merely by exhortation," he said.

The order says federal departments and agencies must require contractors to use an electronic system to verify that the workers are eligible to work in the U.S.

[the systems have existed for years - they've just been ignored]

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[HT:LH]