Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Carbon Emissions Are Good - Robert Zubrin

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/295098/carbon-emissions-are-good-rober...

> Putting aside for the moment the question of whether human industrial CO2 emissions are having an effect on climate, it is quite clear that they are raising atmospheric CO2 levels. As a result, they are having a strong and markedly positiveeffect on plant growth worldwide. There is no doubt about this. NASA satellite observations taken from orbit since 1958 show that, concurrent with the 19 percent increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past half century, the rate of plant growth in the continental United States has increased by 14 percent. Studies done at Oak Ridge National Lab on forest trees have shown that increasing the carbon dioxide level 50 percent, to the 550 parts per million level projected to prevail at the end of the 21 century, will likely increase photosynthetic productivity by a further 24 percent. This is readily reproducible laboratory science. If CO2 levels are increased, the rate of plant growth will accelerate.
>> Now let us consider the question of warming: If it is occurring — and I believe it is, based not on disputable temperature measurements but on sea levels, which have risen two inches in two decades — is it a good thing or a bad thing? Answer: It is a very good thing. Global warming would increase the rate of evaporation from the oceans. This would increase rainfall worldwide. In addition, global warming would lengthen the growing season, thereby increasing still further the bounty of both agriculture and nature.

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Guerrilla Street Art at the Gas Pump

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Justice Kennedy's Million Dollar Question - Richard Epstein

http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/112856

The claim of an unbroken historical understanding of the Commerce Clause put forward by Obamacare supporters is nothing more than a myth cooked up for the occasion. But to supporters of the ACA, it is a necessary myth, which they invoke in order to lend legitimacy to their case for the constitutionality of the law. And on this point at least, for all their anger and resentment, they are correct. It is far easier to extend Wickard v. Filburn to the case of supposed inaction if that decision were on all-fours with Gibbons.

But once it is recognized that it these New Deal Commerce Clause decisions represent a conscious and violent departure from the pre-1937 precedents, we can fairly ask whether it makes sense to take a manifestly wrong decision one step further. The original constitutional balance is far wiser than the souped-up version whose chief contribution to the welfare of the nation was to legitimate the national agricultural cartels that the states could never form acting alone.

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A Narrow Escape For Taxpayers

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/04/a-narrow-escape-for-taxpayers.php

The collapse of the “green” energy industry continued today, as Solar Trust of America LLC filed for bankruptcy. Solar Trust was, it claimed, carrying out the world’s largest solar energy project in California.

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Skepticism in science rises — Glenn Harlan Reynolds

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/faith_in_science_ElyzoJm9wNW7Vl7m8ESXYP

In fact, the very core of the scientific method is supposed to be skepticism. We accept arguments not because they come from people in authority but because they can be proven correct — in independent experiments by independent experimenters. If you make a claim that can’t be proven false in an independent experiment, you’re not really making a scientific claim at all.

And saying, “trust us,” while denouncing skeptics as — horror of horrors — “skeptics” doesn’t count as science, either, even if it comes from someone with a doctorate and a lab coat.

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Sunday, April 01, 2012

Peggy Noonan: Not-So-Smooth Operator

http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html

Faced with the blowback, the president offered a so-called accommodation that even its supporters recognized as devious. Not ill-advised, devious. Then his operatives flooded the airwaves with dishonest—not wrongheaded, dishonest—charges that those who defend the church's religious liberties are trying to take away your contraceptives.

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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Spike Lee retweets wrong address

http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/27/believe-it-or-not-spike-lee-mightve-outsmarted-himself/

Hey, if these two didn’t want to be intimidated and terrorized by an angry movie director and his online followers, they should’ve thought about that before they moved into the house where, 10 years later, somebody would think Zimmerman lived.

If you’re against vigilantes taking matters into their own hands, except when it comes to dealing with George Zimmerman, #YouMightBeALiberal.

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Monday, March 26, 2012

George Will on The Inexorable March of Creative Destruction

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2012/03/22/the_inexorable_march_of_creative_destruction_99578.html

Today's primary political and cultural conflict is, Postrel says, between people, mislabeled "progressives," who crave social stasis, and those, paradoxically called conservatives, who welcome the perpetual churning of society by dynamism.

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Sunday, March 25, 2012

Obamacare: The reckoning - Charles Krauthammer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamacare-the-reckoning/2012/03/22/gIQALF1QUS_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop

Rarely has one law so exemplified the worst of the Leviathan state — grotesque cost, questionable constitutionality and arbitrary bureaucratic coerciveness.

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Saturday, March 24, 2012

The Reagan in Romney - Larry Kudlow

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/294317/reagan-romney-larry-kudlow

> Senator Jim DeMint, another conservative icon, recently told the National Journal after meeting with the former governor, “What I can tell conservatives from my perspective is that I’m not only comfortable with Romney, I’m excited about the possibility of him possibly becoming our nominee.”

> Romney made it clear that economic freedom is the key to the American economy. He said, “The history of the world has shown that economic freedom is the only force that has consistently lifted people out of poverty.” He added, “The genius of America is that we nurture these dreams and the dreamers. We honor them, and, yes, we reward them.”
>> Pause a moment on the idea of rewarding the dreamers. This is a crucial difference with Obama, who wants to penalize the dreamers. Make a bunch of money and you’re gonna pay higher tax rates. It’s the class-warfare 1 percent versus the 99 percent. Tax the rich. Redistribute.

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Saturday, March 17, 2012

Obama’s whopper about Rutherford B. Hayes and the telephone

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-whopper-about-ru...

> So, rather than “not looking forwards,” as Obama put it, Hayes quickly embraced the new technology.

> Besides historians, Obama’s staff also could have checked with the White House Historical Association, which recounts Hayes’s interest in the telephone in a classroom lesson for children in grades 4-8.

http://www.whitehousehistory.org/whha_classroom/classroom_4-8-presidentspeak....

> In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881) spoke on the telephone to the instrument’s inventor, Alexander Graham Bell. Two years later, Hayes had his own telephone in the White House. But the invention was so new that very few homes or offices in Washington had phones, so Hayes had few people to talk to. In fact, the president’s telephone number was "1."

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Rutherford B. Hayes is calling

May 10, 1877:
Hayes has first phone installed in White House

On this day in 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes has the White House's first telephone installed in the mansion's telegraph room. President Hayes embraced the new technology, though he rarely received phone calls. In fact, the Treasury Department possessed the only other direct phone line to the White House at that time. 

Rutherford-1st-phone

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Rutherford's revenge

Friday, March 16, 2012

Obama is the Candidate of Fear

The Washington Free Beacon writes:

http://freebeacon.com/column-obama-is-the-candidate-of-fear/

Barack Obama is now the candidate of fear. The press is so occupied by the Republican horserace that it has missed one of the biggest stories of the age: the Obama team’s adoption of tactics that the president would have ruled out as “politics as usual” only four years ago. The shift is born of necessity. Despite holding fundraisers at twice the rate of his predecessor, the Obama campaign’s high burn rate has left the president with less cash on hand than Bush had at this point in the 2004 cycle. These money troubles spurred the president’s hypocritical decision last month to support outright the Priorities USA super PAC.

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Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Justice Department to Force Public Pools to Install Elevators

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/justice-department-force-public-pools-install-elevators_633885.html

A new regulation from the Justice Department will require “public-access swimming pools across the country to install handicapped-accessible ramps and lifts or face a fine of up to $100,000,” the Hill reports. This regulation could cost “hotels and other organizations  ... to spend up to $9,000 to stay in compliance with the rule.” 

The elevators must be permanent structures, not portable ones, though many hotels across the country only realized this “clarification” to the Justice Department’s regulation recently.

"This is another one-size-fits-all big government mandate that could have a negative impact on Americans," DeMint told the Examiner. "It could lead to increased litigation and heavy fines that could force pools to close or raise fees on families. Pools with public access should have the flexibility to work directly with people with disabilities to accommodate their needs."

There might be hope, though, for pool owners and operators. South Carolina Republican senators DeMint and Lindsey Graham introduced legislation earlier in the week that “would prevent the attorney general from enforcing any rule related to public pools,” as the Hill reports. 

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Obama Law Requires $1 Abortion Subsidy From Every Insured American

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/11181-obama-law-requires-1-abortion-subsidy-from-every-insured-american

The controversial “individual mandate” in the ObamaCare health diktat, which requires Americans to buy health insurance or face a hefty fine, also requires something else: The insured party, thanks to a finalized version of the mandate, must pay a $1 premium to fund abortions.

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Saturday, March 10, 2012

Hard times for Obama Motors

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=50102

The fallout from Barack Obama’s absolute incompetence as an “investor” continues to descend into farce, as we learn that Government Motors – touted as some kind of “success” by Obama, even though taxpayers lost $26 billion on it – is now on the hook for the junk-bond degeneration of French automaker PSA Peugeot Citroen. 

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Sunday, March 04, 2012

Be Breitbart

The Shirley Sherrod tape was not misleading

http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/03/saturday-night-card-game-repeat-after-me-the-shirley-sherrod-tape-was-not-misleading/

What really was going on was that the crowd reaction to Sherrod’s comments caught on the tape was very damaging to the NAACP and those who attacked the Tea Party movement as racist.  The crowd cheered when Sherrod recounted her long-ago hostility to the white farmer, and that crowd reaction was the real story. Focusing the debate on the editing of the tape was a convenient distraction.

So let’s put to bed the claim that the original Sherrod tape was misleading, defamatory or reflective of racial codes or racism on the part of Breitbart.

Andrew Breitbart is not around to defend himself anymore, and we owe it to him to push back, hard.

Follow the link for video.

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Thursday, March 01, 2012

Andrew Breitbart Dead At 43

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/01/andrew-breitbart-dies-natural-caus...

> Widely read conservative Internet publisher Andrew Breitbart, whose flare for battle with politicians and the mainstream media earned him a reputation as one of the nation's most influential commentators, died Thursday.>> The websites he founded ran a statement Thursday morning announcing that Breitbart, 43, died "unexpectedly from natural causes" in Los Angeles shortly after midnight.


http://www.breitbart.tv/in-memoriam-andrew-breitbart-1969-2012/

http://www.breitbart.tv/jonah-goldberg-one-of-the-most-fearless-people-i-ever...

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1482639008001/

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