Climategate: Viscount Monckton Takes a Victory Lap

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-viscount-monckton-takes-a-victory-lap/?singlepage=true
> For several months, the “Monthly CO2 Reports,” compiled by me at www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org> , have been pointing out that there has been no statistically > significant “global warming” for 15 years. Regular attacks on my > calculations and graphs have appeared on blogs by the usual suspects > — Gavin Schmidt of NASA being, as usual, the most venomously ad > hominem and the least scientifically plausible.
>
> Then came Climategate. Kevin Trenberth, one of the many scientists > whose activities I had been following with suspicion for some years, > had privately been saying to his colleagues that there had been “no > global warming for a decade” and that it was “a travesty” that they > could not explain why. Publicly, of course, the Climategate > conspirators had been saying that the last ten years were the > warmest decade on the instrumental record — true, but not surprising > given that there has been 300 years of global warming.
>
> Now, Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia has > admitted publicly, and — as far as I know — for the first time, that > there has been no statistically significant “global warming” for 15 > years. He has also admitted that his Climatic Research Unit has lost > much of the data behind the “hockey-stick” graph, via which Michael > Mann and other Climategate conspirators had falsely attempted to > demonstrate that the Medieval Warm Period was not warmer than the > present.

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Mukasey - Where the U.S. went wrong on the Christmas Day bomber

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021103331.html

There was thus no legal or policy compulsion to treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal defendant, at least initially, and every reason to treat him as an intelligence asset to be exploited promptly. The way to do that was not simply to have locally available field agents question him but, rather, to get in the room people who knew about al-Qaeda in Yemen, people who could obtain information, check that information against other available data and perhaps get feedback from others in the field before going back to Abdulmutallab to follow up where necessary, all the while keeping secret the fact of his cooperation. Once his former cohorts know he is providing information, they can act to make that information useless.

Nor is it an answer to say that Abdulmutallab resumed his cooperation even after he was warned of his rights. He did that after five weeks, when his family was flown here from Nigeria. The time was lost, and with it possibly useful information. Disclosing that he had resumed talking only compounded the problem by letting his former cohorts know that they had better cover their tracks.

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Derbyshire: Playing the System

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTEyM2FiMTRlYjM4MGFkZDgxN2UxYjBiNTc0MzdiZGQ=

Anyone who lives in England will tell you that the police forces there no longer spend much time investigating crimes. Most of their energies are devoted to proving their "commitment to diversity." That is the system Mr. Dizaei gamed for 25 years with great skill, until he went a step too far.

The probity and integrity of Britain's major social systems are being destroyed by the "diversity" cult. The end point of this will be a Middle Eastern bazaar culture, where system-gamers run the show and people who adhere to old-fashioned British standards of honorable and public-spirited behavior will be regarded as fools and losers.

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Sowell: The Fallacy of ‘Fairness’

http://article.nationalreview.com/424381/the-fallacy-of-fairness/thomas-sowell

Some years ago, for example, there was a big outcry that various mental tests used for college admissions or for employment were biased and “unfair” to many individuals or groups. Fortunately, there was one voice of sanity — David Riesman, I believe — who said: The tests are not unfair. Life is unfair and the tests measure the results.

If by “fair,” you mean everyone having the same odds for achieving success, then life has never been anywhere close to being fair, at any place or time. If you stop and think about it (however old-fashioned that may seem), it is hard even to conceive of how life could possibly be fair in that sense.

Read the whole thing.  Actually, there's a series of four articles on "fairness".

The Fallacy of ‘Fairness’ - Thomas Sowell - National Review Online

‘Fairness’ in Education - Thomas Sowell - National Review Online

Rawls and Fairness - Thomas Sowell - National Review Online

Innate Superiority: An Inferior Idea - Thomas Sowell - National Review Online

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McCarthy: Padilla Proves the WEAKNESSES of the Civilian Justice System

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTUzOGZjMWIxMWY2NzNmY2U5ZDRiYTg2YTZhZThmODc=

Padilla is actually the case that best shows the limitations and inadequacies of the civilian justice system as applied to enemy combatants.  This fact is obscured because, as the Left keeps repeating, he was eventually transferred from military custody to the civilian justice system, where he was convicted.

Here's what they never tell you:  He was not convicted of the most important plot we had against him — the conspiracy with KSM, Binyam Mohammed, and others to carry out a second wave of post-9/11 attacks inside the United States.  He was never indicted on that plot because he could not be convicted applying civilian due process standards.

Padilla refused to give information to the FBI, using its regular protocols.  It was only when he was designated as an enemy combatant and transferred to military custody (no lawyer involved in interrogations, no Miranda, no case to plea bargain) that he began to give up valuable information.  None of those confessions could be admitted under the standards applicable in civilian courts. 

Read the whole thing.  McCarthy provides additional useful links.

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Tom Campbell: We Can Do Much More to Reduce the Federal Deficit

I propose that we not only restore Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, but that we dramatically cut the federal budget deficit proposed by the President by more than half.  We not only can achieve this, we must.

Here’s how we can achieve this:

http://biggovernment.com/tcampbell/2010/02/10/we-can-do-much-more-to-reduce-the-federal-deficit/

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Record snowfall in DC

I'm not sure why, but the Senate cancelled a hearing on Global Warming yesterday.

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Barone: With absolute power, Team Obama grows stupid

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/With-absolute-power_-Team-Obama-grows-stupid-83945567.html

So Obama was faced with a fundamental choice. He could either chart a bipartisan course in response to the economic emergency, or he could try to expand government to Western European magnitude as Democratic congressional leaders, elected for years in monopartisan districts, had long wished to do. The former community organizer and Chicago pol chose the latter course.

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An excuse for a new pork binge

Michelle Malkin:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/an_excuse_for_new_pork_binge_ffOyIPod5oRcTowEyef1TM

> Immutable law of Beltway political physics: The only real jobs that > a government stimulus stimulates are government jobs. A year after > President Obama signed his first almost trillion-dollar economic-> stimulus package into law, the federal workforce is at an all-time > high. The nation's unemployment rate has swelled to 9.7 percent, but > Washington's economy is thriving.

> More than 2.1 million government workers will be on the federal > payroll by the end of 2010. The lobbying industry is booming. USA > Today reports that 14 federal agencies have hired 3,000 workers to > oversee stimulus spending and have spent nearly $190 million so far > on salaries and overhead.

John Derbyshire comments:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDVjYWM1MjNlZTE3N2EwYWZkY2Q5YTdhODY3ZTc0M2M=

> The primary purpose of every jobs program is to create jobs for the > people who run the program. No Bureaucrat Left Behind!

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Time Magazine on the D.C. Snowstorm: How Global Warming Makes Blizzards Worse

Is there anything bad that isn't caused by Global Warming?  I wonder if the spin is causing storms to get worse.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1962294,00.html

My theory is that Al Gore is very close to solving the Global Warming problem, but his experiments in DC got a little bit out of control.  It's kind of like how the oil companies already know how to produce cars that get 200 mpg, but they're holding back on the technology because they don't want the price of oil to collapse.  Al Gore stands to lose a lot of money if the Global Warming crisis cools off too quickly.

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Steyn: House of Peers

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTYyZTBjYjAzOTA1OTM5Y2UyOTQ0Y2I0ZDJkMzBjNDU=

But, in the course of invoking the phrase "peer review", she never bothers to look at whether the IPCC actually does it. By contrast, without benefit of the resources of a national TV news operation plus salary and benefits, lone blogger Donna Laframboise did a couple of text searches on the IPCC report and discovered multiple predictions of doom - on Himalayan glacier melt and much else - resting not on peer-reviewed science but merely on activist groups such as the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace.

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George Will - The United States of Fiscal Folly

Read the whole thing:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/02/04/a_future_rooted_in_the_past_100162.html

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Audi 2010 Green Car Super Bowl Commercial

Funny, but I'm not sure if it will sell cars:

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Gillespie and Lessig debate free speech and campaign financing

Libertarian journalist Nick Gillespie and legal scholar Lawrence Lessig discuss public financing of campaigns and the effects of money on politics

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02052010/watch2.html

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GOP fires back: White House did not tell us about reading Abdulmutallab his rights

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/GOP-fires-back-White-House-did-not-tell-us-about-reading-Abdulmutallab-his-rights-83760942.html

On "Meet the Press," Brennan said that on Christmas night, just hours after Abdulmutallab tried to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253, Brennan called GOP Senators Mitch McConnell and Christopher Bond, as well as Republican Representatives John Boehner and Peter Hoekstra, and told them that Abdulmutallab was in FBI custody. "None of those individuals raised any concerns with me at that point," Brennan said. "They didn't say, Is he going into military custody? Is he going to be Mirandized?"

Each of the lawmakers strongly denies Brennan's account. A spokesman for McConnell says, "During a brief call from the White House, Sen. McConnell was given a heads up that Abdulmutallab was in custody, but little else. He wasn’t told of the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab."

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Ronnie and Joe

Ronald Reagan was born on this day in 1911.  Here's a little story about how he got along with the common folks...

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTFkZTcyMzFmNjNhZWQ1ZTMwY2NiZTNjNTE0YTAxMGE=

“Well, what does it look like?” asked Reagan. Clark noted he had a model in the car: Joe, who was wearing the belt. “Send him up,” ordered the president. They called for Joe, who entered via the door of Reagan’s secretary.

Joe had worked for the federal government for half a century, but had never been within 50 yards of the Oval Office. He walked in. He saw Clark, Vice President Bush, the senior aides, and the president of the United States. He was in awe, overcome. Suddenly, this tough six-foot-four man began weeping: He had come so far since Jim Crow and the Great Depression. He was choked up.

No one in the room was prepared for that reaction. They were dead silent, uncomfortable, unable to respond — except for Ronald Reagan. The president rose, walked over to the driver, extended his hand, breathed in, and said matter-of-factly, “Mr. Bullock, I understand you have a belt to show me?”

It was an “everyman” touch. And it put old Joe immediately at ease. Business-like, Joe showed the belt, and then he and Reagan began swapping stories, chatting away like old friends.

“The rest of us just faded away,” said Bill Clark, “as the two got along famously.” President and driver, remembering the old days.

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Steyn: Credibility is what’s really melting

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/02/03/credibility-is-what-is-really-melting/2/

V. K. Raina, of the Geological Survey of India, produced a special report demonstrating that the run-for-your-life-the-glaciers-are-melting IPCC scenario was utterly false. For his pains, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the self-aggrandizing old bruiser and former railroad engineer who serves as head honcho of the IPCC jet set, dismissed Mr. Raina’s research as “voodoo science.” He’s now been obliged to admit the voodoo was all on his side. But don’t worry. By 2008, Syed Hasnain’s decade-old casual chit-chat over the phone to a London journalist had become “settled science,” so Dr. Pachauri’s company TERI (The Energy & Resources Institute) approached the Carnegie Corporation for a grant to research “challenges to South Asia posed by melting Himalayan glaciers,” and was rewarded with half a million bucks. Which they promptly used to hire Syed Hasnain. In other words, professor Hasnain has landed a cushy gig researching solutions to an entirely non-existent global crisis he accidentally invented over a 15-minute phone call 10 years earlier. As they say in the glacier business, ice work if you can get it.

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Gangster government targets Toyota

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Gangster-government-targets-Toyota-83460857.html

What is it about the automotive industry that inspires such thuggish attitudes in the Obama administration? The Examiner's Michael Barone coined the term "gangster government" to describe threats by the White House last spring against Chrysler creditors who had the temerity to insist that bankruptcy laws be followed in the bailout of the perennially ailing third member of the once-fabled Detroit Big Three. Now along comes Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood muttering darkly that "we're not finished with Toyota" in the controversy over sticking gas pedals in vehicles made and sold in America by the Japanese automaker.  [...] The potential of the current sticking gas pedal controversy to inflict damage on Toyota here in its largest single market is seen in the January sales figures. Toyota sales are down 16 percent while GM is up 14 percent (Ford, which declined a government bailout last year, is up 25 percent, while Chrysler is down 8 percent). Keep the controversy going and odds are good that Toyota sales will continue to drop. The biggest losers besides American consumers will be the men and women who own and work at Toyota's 1,200 U.S. dealerships and the 30,000 Americans who build Toyotas in its five factories here. LaHood might as well have said "Nice car company ya got there, be a shame if anything happened to it."

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The Death of Global Warming

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/02/01/the-death-of-global-warming/

After years in which global warming activists had lectured everyone about the overwhelming nature of the scientific evidence, it turned out that the most prestigious agencies in the global warming movement were breaking laws, hiding data, and making inflated, bogus claims resting on, in some cases, no scientific basis at all. This latest story in the London Times is yet another shocker; the IPCC’s claims that the rainforests were going to disappear as a result of global warming are as bogus and fraudulent as its claims that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. 

My comment: Global Warming is not really dead as long as our politicians believe in it, and our scientists can get grants to study it, and our celebrities can fly around the world in private jets to combat it.  As long as there are Nobel Peace Prizes and Oscars to be awarded, there will be a Global Warming crisis.  Even if it's not really true, aren't we better off believing in something? Aren't elaborate computer models more inspiring than mere data? Isn't caring about the planet more important than scientific truth?  I think you know the answer deep in your heart.

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Pelosi's Children and Grandchildren Used Military Jets As Private Cross-Country Shuttle Service

Air Pelosi must have a great Frequent Flyer program:

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2010/01/pelosi-children-and-grandchildren-get.html

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