IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Motion For Retrial

http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=278031924272951

Trail Of Terror: The Council on American-Islamic Relations is cheering a mistrial in a major terror case as a "stunning defeat" for the U.S. government. But the celebration may be premature.

Federal prosecutors say they'll retry the case against leaders of the Holy Land Foundation, the nation's largest Muslim charity, which they accused of funneling more than $12 million to Hamas terrorists. CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, also cheered a similar outcome in a federal case against Muslim activist Sami al-Arian in Florida. As in the Holy Land case, jurors deadlocked on several terror counts. But prosecutors threatened a retrial and al-Arian later pleaded guilty to lesser charges. He was defended by the same lawyer defending one of the accused Holy Land leaders, Ghassan Elashi, who happens to also be a founding member of CAIR. Barring plea bargains, the U.S. will narrow its charges and refile them — hopefully with a new judge. U.S. District Judge Joe Fish barred key evidence helping prosecutors prove willful intent to support terror on the part of defendants.

WorldNetDaily: The global-warming hucksters

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58279

Like the panics of bygone eras, this one has the aspect of yet another re-enactment of the Big Con. The huckster arrives in town, tells all the rubes that disaster impends for them and their families, but says there may be one last chance they can be saved – but it will take a lot of money. And the folks should go about collecting it, right now.

This, it seems to me, is what the global-warming scare and scam are all about – frightening Americans into transferring sovereignty, power and wealth to a global political elite that claims it alone understands the crisis and it alone can save us from impending disaster.

Ouch! Hillary Clinton's softer image is clawed over dumped cat - Times Online

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2702804.ece

"In the annals of human evil, off-loading a pet is nowhere near the top of the list," writes Caitlin Flanagan in the current issue of The Atlantic magazine. "But neither is it dead last, and it is especially galling when said pet has been deployed for years as an all-purpose character reference."

Flanagan's article, headed No Girlfriend of Mine, points out that Clinton wrote a crowd-pleas-ing book Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids' Letters to the First Pets, in which she claimed that only with the arrival of Socks and his "toy mouse" did the White House "become a home".

Being Clinton, she also lectured readers that pets are an "adoption instead of an acquisition" and warned them to look out for their safety. (Buddy, the chocolate labrador, it should be noted, bounded into a road soon after leaving the White House and was promptly run over.)

Increasing Competition in the Real Estate Industry

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_10_14-2007_10_20.shtml#1192638761

The DOJ has set up a new website that describes all of the anticompetitive legislative and regulatory barriers in the residential real estate market that raise the price of real estate services and reduce consumer choice. There is lots of informative and good stuff there. My FTC colleague Luke Froeb has more.

One area in which we regrettably fell short was for reform of closing costs by permitting "bundling" of all closing costs into a binding estimate for all the costs, soup to nuts. This would have permitted to consumers to shop for all costs at one as a package, rather than the current required HUD-1 process where all the costs are itemized instead. One story that describes the HUD proposal and its demise is here.

Gore gets a cold shoulder - Environment - smh.com.au

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/gore-gets-a-cold-shoulder/2007/10/13/1191696238792.html

ONE of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works".

Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.

His comments came on the same day that the Nobel committee honoured Mr Gore for his work in support of the link between humans and global warming.

"We're brainwashing our children," said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."

An Inconvenient Question: Should Al Gore Fly to Oslo For His Nobel Prize?

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/an-inconvenient-question-should-al-gore-fly-to-stockholm/

Should he skip the trip to Oslo, Norway, on a fuel-burning jet and instead accept the award by teleconference?

I realize two plane flights would make little difference to Mr. Gore's carbon footprint (certainly by comparison with the much-publicized utility bills for his home). But as he pointed out in "An Inconvenient Truth":

Flying is another form of transportation that produces large amounts of carbon dioxide. Reducing air travel even by one or two flights per year can significantly reduce emissions. . . . If your airplane travel is for business, consider whether you can telecommute instead.

Power Line: A Tree Falls In the Forest

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2007/10/018743.php

Today General Ricardo Sanchez gave a speech to the Military Reporters and Editors' annual conference, in which he criticized just about everyone associated with our effort in Iraq. The Washington Post's headline was typical: "Former Iraq Commander Faults Bush."

[actual quote from General Sanchez regarding the US press:]

ALL ARE VICTIMS OF THE MASSIVE AGENDA DRIVEN COMPETITION FOR ECONOMIC OR POLITICAL SUPREMACY. THE DEATH KNELL OF YOUR ETHICS HAS BEEN ENABLED BY YOUR PARENT ORGANIZATIONS WHO HAVE CHOSEN TO ALIGN THEMSELVES WITH POLITICAL AGENDAS. WHAT IS CLEAR TO ME IS THAT YOU ARE PERPETUATING THE CORROSIVE PARTISAN POLITICS THAT IS DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY AND KILLING OUR SERVICEMEMBERS WHO ARE AT WAR.

MY ASSESSMENT IS THAT YOUR PROFESSION, TO SOME EXTENT, HAS STRAYED FROM THESE ETHICAL STANDARDS AND ALLOWED EXTERNAL AGENDAS TO MANIPULATE WHAT THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SEES ON TV, WHAT THEY READ IN OUR NEWSPAPERS AND WHAT THEY SEE ON THE WEB. FOR SOME OF YOU, JUST LIKE SOME OF OUR POLITICIANS, THE TRUTH IS OF LITTLE TO NO VALUE IF IT DOES NOT FIT YOUR OWN PRECONCEIVED NOTIONS, BIASES AND AGENDAS.

Steven F. Hayward on Al Gore & Nobel Peace Prize on National Review Online

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjQzNDFhZTFkMmM4YWE5Nzk4ZjUxZGVkOGRiM2UzZjg=

The glitter of the Nobel overshadows the inconvenient news reported last week that a British court of law labeled Gore's movie as partisan political propaganda, pointing out 11 different errors of fact or scientific judgment, and prohibiting its screening in British public schools without a disclaimer of these defects. The Nobel will be one more quiver in Gore's arsenal of intransigent moral authority by which he refuses to debate any aspect of the subject and declares the entire matter "settled." It's never a good sign when politicians declare a scientific matter settled; we all remember how well that worked out for the Vatican when they told Galileo 400 years ago that astronomy was settled. It is even more problematic to suggest that climate change is not a political issue, but a moral issue, but then to demand massive political interventions in the economy to fix the problem. 

The adrenaline rush of the Nobel is likely to prove evanescent, however, and will probably turn out to be the high water mark of climate hysteria. Increasingly, climate catastrophe is coming more and more to resemble the hysteria over the "population bomb" of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In those days, Paul Ehrlich was a frequent guest on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, and there were government commissions launched here and abroad to ponder whether we needed an aggressive anti-natalist policy. The effort to develop a population policy in the U.S. collapsed quickly and quietly when someone pointed out that any anti-natalist policy would disproportionately affect racial and ethnic minorities. Oops. 

Gore and IPCC win Nobel Peace Prize

http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzM2MWNlMTA4NjA1MjY4MjY0ODE3M2YxZTVhNmQ1MGU=

Keeping to the trend of politicized awards, the Nobel Peace Prize has been given jointly to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In his initial statement, however, Gore explains that global warming isn't a political issue at all: "The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level."

Glad he cleared that up. I had been thinking it had something to do with science.

Robert Cox: Google bans anti-MoveOn.org ads - Examiner.com

http://www.examiner.com/a-983100~Robert_Cox__Google_bans_anti_MoveOn_org_ads.html

Internet giant Google has banned advertisements critical of MoveOn.org, the far-left advocacy group that caused a national uproar last month when it received preferential treatment from The New York Times for its "General Betray Us" message.

The ads banned by Google were placed by a firm working for Republican Sen. Susan Collins' re-election campaign. Collins is seeking her third term.

Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/science/09tier.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&partner=rssuserland

With skeptical scientists ostracized, the public debate and research agenda became dominated by the fat-is-bad school. Later the National Institutes of Health would hold a "consensus conference" that concluded there was "no doubt" that low-fat diets "will afford significant protection against coronary heart disease" for every American over the age of 2. The American Cancer Society and the surgeon general recommended a low-fat diet to prevent cancer.

But when the theories were tested in clinical trials, the evidence kept turning up negative. As Mr. Taubes notes, the most rigorous meta-analysis of the clinical trials of low-fat diets, published in 2001 by the Cochrane Collaboration, concluded that they had no significant effect on mortality.

Mr. Taubes argues that the low-fat recommendations, besides being unjustified, may well have harmed Americans by encouraging them to switch to carbohydrates, which he believes cause obesity and disease. He acknowledges that that hypothesis is unproved, and that the low-carb diet fad could turn out to be another mistaken cascade. The problem, he says, is that the low-carb hypothesis hasn't been seriously studied because it couldn't be reconciled with the low-fat dogma.

Mr. Taubes told me he especially admired the iconoclasm of Dr. Edward H. Ahrens Jr., a lipids researcher who spoke out against the McGovern committee's report. Mr. McGovern subsequently asked him at a hearing to reconcile his skepticism with a survey showing that the low-fat recommendations were endorsed by 92 percent of "the world's leading doctors."

"Senator McGovern, I recognize the disadvantage of being in the minority," Dr. Ahrens replied. Then he pointed out that most of the doctors in the survey were relying on secondhand knowledge because they didn't work in this field themselves.

"This is a matter," he continued, "of such enormous social, economic and medical importance that it must be evaluated with our eyes completely open. Thus I would hate to see this issue settled by anything that smacks of a Gallup poll." Or a cascade.

He’s back: Sandy Berger now advising Hillary Clinton - Examiner.com

http://www.examiner.com/a-977346~He_s_back__Sandy_Berger_now_advising_Hillary_Clinton.html

Sandy Berger, who stole highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives, destroyed them and lied to investigators, is now an adviser to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Berger, who was fired from John Kerry's presidential campaign when the scandal broke in 2004, has assumed a similar role in Clinton's campaign, even though his security clearance has been suspended until September 2008. This is raising eyebrows even among Clinton's admirers.

"It shows poor judgment and a lack of regard for Berger's serious misdeeds," said law professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University, who nonetheless called Clinton "by far the most impressive candidate in the Democratic field."

"Sandy Berger Can" song parody

Excellent work...

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/016537.php

Sandy Berger Can 

(to the tune of "Secret Agent Man")

Bill and Hillary lookin' for a legacy 

But the national archives held a vast conspiracy

They thought about a plan 

Asking who would be their man

Who can we now trust to crack this quandary? 

Sandy Berger can

Sandy Berger can

He can stuff that troubling history into his socks and pants

(follow the link for the audio)

He’s back: Sandy Berger now advising Hillary Clinton - Examiner.com

http://www.examiner.com/a-977346~He_s_back__Sandy_Berger_now_advising_Hillary_Clinton.html

Sandy Berger, who stole highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives, destroyed them and lied to investigators, is now an adviser to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Berger, who was fired from John Kerry's presidential campaign when the scandal broke in 2004, has assumed a similar role in Clinton's campaign, even though his security clearance has been suspended until September 2008. This is raising eyebrows even among Clinton's admirers.

Drug czar: Milton Friedman's drug-war critique 'demonstrably untrue'

I'm still with Milton Friedman on this issue.  Chris Reed spoke with John Walters, the current "drug czar"...

http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/weblogs/afb/archives/015076.html

Then I got into Milton Friedman's critique of the drug war, noting the evidence that the drug war -- by making popular intoxicants illegal and only available via a highly lucrative black market -- was responsible for lots of crimes beyond buying and selling, and that it had led to police corruption, among many other unintended consequences. I asked what he would do to combat drugs if could start over from scratch.

He said "the problem is not that we make drugs a crime; it is that drugs are catalysts to crime." And he said what "the facts really say" is that Milton Friendman's criticisms of the drug war were "untrue -- demonstrably untrue."

Here's what Friedman had to say in Newsweek in 1972 as the drug war was first gearing up:

Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order?

But, you may say, must we accept defeat? Why not simply end the drug traffic? That is where experience under Prohibition is most relevant. We cannot end the drug traffic. We may be able to cut off opium from Turkey but there are innumerable other places where the opium poppy grows. With French cooperation, we may be able to make Marseilles an unhealthy place to manufacture heroin but there are innumerable other places where the simple manufacturing operations involved can be carried out. So long as large sums of money are involved -- and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal -- it is literally hopeless to expect to end the traffic or even to reduce seriously its scope. In drugs, as in other areas, persuasion and example are likely to be far more effective than the use of force to shape others in our image.

IDF confirms that aircraft hit target inside Syria last month | Jerusalem Post

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1191257212152&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

Although Israel did not come out with an official statement following the incident, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu broke the silence two weeks afterwards when he said he had congratulated Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on the strike.

In an interview with Channel 1, Netanyahu said that he was "part of the matter from the beginning" and that he knew to separate matters of national security from politics.

The overflight was first reported on Syrian television just after the attack, and various reports regarding the strike's target have circulated in the press over the past month.

The Washington Post reported that the target had been a facility involved in a joint Syrian-North Korean nuclear project - a claim backed by former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton.

Britain's Sunday Times, meanwhile, reported just over a week ago that soldiers from the IDF's elite General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret Matkal) had seized North Korean nuclear material from a secret Syrian military installation before it was bombed by IAF jets.

The paper claimed that the IAF attack on September 6 was sanctioned by the US after the Americans were given proof that the material was indeed nuclear-related. It also stated that Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who used to head the unit, personally oversaw the operation.