Global Warming Consensus: Garbage in, Garbage out
Michael Barone
As Air Force One heads to Copenhagen for the climate summit Dec. 9, it will presumably not make a U-turn while flying over the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at University of East Anglia near Norwich, England. But perhaps it should.
The 61 megabytes of CRU e-mails and documents made public by a hacker cast serious doubt on the ballyhooed consensus on manmade global warming that the Copenhagen summit was called to address.
The CRU has been a major source of data on global temperatures, relied on by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But the e-mails suggest that CRU scientists have been suppressing and misstating data and working to prevent the publication of conflicting views in peer-reviewed science periodicals. Some of the more pungent e-mails:
"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
"Can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith re AR4?"
"I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."
"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty we can't."
�"I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU temperature station data. Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!"
You get the idea. The most charitable plausible explanation I have seen comes from The Atlantic's Megan McArdle. "The CRU's main computer model may be, to put it bluntly, complete rubbish."
Australian geologist Ian Plimer, a global warming skeptic, is more blunt. The e-mails "show that data was massaged, numbers were fudged, diagrams were biased, there was destruction of data after freedom of information requests, and there was refusal to submit taxpayer-funded data for independent examination."
Global warming alarmist George Monbiot of the Guardian concedes that the e-mails "could scarcely be more damaging," adding, "I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them." He has called for the resignation of the CRU director. All of which brings to mind the old computer geek's phrase: garbage in, garbage out. The Copenhagen climate summit was convened to get the leaders of nations to commit to sharp reductions in carbon dioxide emissions -- and thus sharp reductions in almost all energy usage, at huge economic cost -- in order to prevent disasters that supposedly were predicted with absolute certainty by a scientific consensus.
But that consensus was based in large part on CRU data that was, to take the charitable explanation, "complete rubbish" or, to take the more dire view, the product of deliberate fraud.
Quite possibly the CRU e-mailers were sincere in their belief that they were saving the planet. Like Al Gore, they wanted to convince the world's elites that the time for argument is over, the scientific consensus is clear and those who disagree can be dismissed as cranks (and should be disqualified from receiving research grants). If they had to cut a few corners, well, you have to break eggs to make an omelette.
For those of us who have long suspected that constructing scientific models of climate and weather is an enormously complex undertaking quite possibly beyond the capacity of current computer technology, the CRU e-mails are not so surprising.
Do we really suppose that anyone can construct a database of weather observations for the entire planet and its atmosphere adequate to make confident predictions of weather and climate 60 years from now? Predictions in which we have enough confidence to impose enormous costs on the American and world economies?
Copenhagen, despite Barack Obama's presence, seems sure to be a bust -- there will be no agreement on mandatory limits on carbon emissions. Even if there were, it would probably turn out to be no more effective than the limits others agreed to in Kyoto in 1997. In any case, China and India are not going to choke off their dazzling economic growth to please Western global warming alarmists.
The more interesting question going forward is whether European and American governmental, academic and corporate elites, having embraced global warming alarmism with religious fervor, will be shaken by the scandalous CRU e-mails. They should be.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Why Do We Let This So-Called Religion Flourish In This Nation?
Joys of Muslim Women
By Nonie Darwish
In the Muslim faith a Muslim man can marry a child as young as 1 year oldand have sexual intimacy with this child. Consummating the marriage by 9.
The dowry is given to the family in exchange for the woman (who becomes his slave) and for the purchase of the private parts of the woman, to use her as a toy.
Even though a woman is abused she can not obtain a divorce.
To prove rape, the woman must have (4) male witnesses.
Often after a woman has been raped, she is returned to her family and the family must return the dowry. The family has the right to execute her (an honor killing) to restore the honor of the family. Husbands can beat their wives 'at will' and he does not have to say why he has beaten her.
The husband is permitted to have (4 wives) and a temporary wife for an hour (prostitute) at his discretion.
The Shariah Muslim law controls the private as well as the public life of the woman.
In the West World (America) Muslim men are starting to demand Shariah Law so the wife can not obtain a divorce and he can have full and complete control of her. It is amazing and alarming how many of our sisters and daughters attending American Universities are now marrying Muslim men and submitting themselves and their children unsuspectingly to the Shariah law.
By passing this on, enlightened American women may avoid becoming a slave under Shariah Law.
Ripping the West in Two.
Author and lecturer Nonie Darwish says the goal of radical Islamists is to impose Shariah law on the world, ripping Western law and liberty in two..
She recently authored the book, Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law.
Darwish was born in Cairo and spent her childhood in Egypt and Gaza before immigrating to America in 1978, when she was eight years old. Her father died while leading covert attacks on Israel. He was a high-ranking Egyptian military officer stationed with his family in Gaza .
When he died, he was considered a "shahid," a martyr for jihad. His posthumous status earned Nonie and her family an elevated position in Muslim society.
But Darwish developed a skeptical eye at an early age. She questioned her own Muslim culture and upbringing. She converted to Christianity after hearing a Christian preacher on television.
In her latest book, Darwish warns about creeping sharia law - what it is, what it means, and how it is manifested in Islamic countries.
For the West, she says radical Islamists are working to impose sharia on the world. If that happens, Western civilization will be destroyed. Westerners generally assume all religions encourage a respect for the dignity of each individual. Islamic law (Sharia) teaches that non-Muslims should be subjugated or killed in this world.
Peace and prosperity for one's children is not as important as assuring that Islamic law rules everywhere in the Middle East and eventually in the world.
While Westerners tend to think that all religions encourage some form of the golden rule, Sharia teaches two systems of ethics - one for Muslims and another for non-Muslims. Building on tribal practices of the seventh century, Sharia encourages the side of humanity that wants to take from and subjugate others.
While Westerners tend to think in terms of religious people developing a personal understanding of and relationship with
God, Sharia advocates executing people who ask difficult questions that could be interpreted as criticism.
It's hard to imagine, that in this day and age, Islamic scholars agree that those who criticize Islam or choose to stop being Muslim should be executed. Sadly, while talk of an Islamic reformation is common and even assumed by many in the West, such murmurings in the Middle East are silenced through intimidation.
While Westerners are accustomed to an increase in religious tolerance over time, Darwish explains how petro dollars are being used to grow an extremely intolerant form of political Islam in her native Egypt and elsewhere.
In twenty years there will be enough Muslim voters in the U.S. To elect the President by themselves! Rest assured they will do so... You can look at how they have taken over several towns in the USA.. Dearborn Mich. Is one... And there are others...
I think everyone in the U.S. Should be required to read this, but with the ACLU, there is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on!
It is too bad that so many are disillusioned with life and Christianity to accept Muslims as peaceful.. some may be but they have an army that is willing to shed blood in the name of Islam.. the peaceful support the warriors with their finances and own kind of patriotism to their religion.. While America is getting rid of Christianity from all public sites and erasing God from the lives of children the Muslims are planning a great jihad on America ..
This is your chance to make a difference...! Pass it on to your email list or at least those you think will listen..
By Nonie Darwish
In the Muslim faith a Muslim man can marry a child as young as 1 year oldand have sexual intimacy with this child. Consummating the marriage by 9.
The dowry is given to the family in exchange for the woman (who becomes his slave) and for the purchase of the private parts of the woman, to use her as a toy.
Even though a woman is abused she can not obtain a divorce.
To prove rape, the woman must have (4) male witnesses.
Often after a woman has been raped, she is returned to her family and the family must return the dowry. The family has the right to execute her (an honor killing) to restore the honor of the family. Husbands can beat their wives 'at will' and he does not have to say why he has beaten her.
The husband is permitted to have (4 wives) and a temporary wife for an hour (prostitute) at his discretion.
The Shariah Muslim law controls the private as well as the public life of the woman.
In the West World (America) Muslim men are starting to demand Shariah Law so the wife can not obtain a divorce and he can have full and complete control of her. It is amazing and alarming how many of our sisters and daughters attending American Universities are now marrying Muslim men and submitting themselves and their children unsuspectingly to the Shariah law.
By passing this on, enlightened American women may avoid becoming a slave under Shariah Law.
Ripping the West in Two.
Author and lecturer Nonie Darwish says the goal of radical Islamists is to impose Shariah law on the world, ripping Western law and liberty in two..
She recently authored the book, Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law.
Darwish was born in Cairo and spent her childhood in Egypt and Gaza before immigrating to America in 1978, when she was eight years old. Her father died while leading covert attacks on Israel. He was a high-ranking Egyptian military officer stationed with his family in Gaza .
When he died, he was considered a "shahid," a martyr for jihad. His posthumous status earned Nonie and her family an elevated position in Muslim society.
But Darwish developed a skeptical eye at an early age. She questioned her own Muslim culture and upbringing. She converted to Christianity after hearing a Christian preacher on television.
In her latest book, Darwish warns about creeping sharia law - what it is, what it means, and how it is manifested in Islamic countries.
For the West, she says radical Islamists are working to impose sharia on the world. If that happens, Western civilization will be destroyed. Westerners generally assume all religions encourage a respect for the dignity of each individual. Islamic law (Sharia) teaches that non-Muslims should be subjugated or killed in this world.
Peace and prosperity for one's children is not as important as assuring that Islamic law rules everywhere in the Middle East and eventually in the world.
While Westerners tend to think that all religions encourage some form of the golden rule, Sharia teaches two systems of ethics - one for Muslims and another for non-Muslims. Building on tribal practices of the seventh century, Sharia encourages the side of humanity that wants to take from and subjugate others.
While Westerners tend to think in terms of religious people developing a personal understanding of and relationship with
God, Sharia advocates executing people who ask difficult questions that could be interpreted as criticism.
It's hard to imagine, that in this day and age, Islamic scholars agree that those who criticize Islam or choose to stop being Muslim should be executed. Sadly, while talk of an Islamic reformation is common and even assumed by many in the West, such murmurings in the Middle East are silenced through intimidation.
While Westerners are accustomed to an increase in religious tolerance over time, Darwish explains how petro dollars are being used to grow an extremely intolerant form of political Islam in her native Egypt and elsewhere.
In twenty years there will be enough Muslim voters in the U.S. To elect the President by themselves! Rest assured they will do so... You can look at how they have taken over several towns in the USA.. Dearborn Mich. Is one... And there are others...
I think everyone in the U.S. Should be required to read this, but with the ACLU, there is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on!
It is too bad that so many are disillusioned with life and Christianity to accept Muslims as peaceful.. some may be but they have an army that is willing to shed blood in the name of Islam.. the peaceful support the warriors with their finances and own kind of patriotism to their religion.. While America is getting rid of Christianity from all public sites and erasing God from the lives of children the Muslims are planning a great jihad on America ..
This is your chance to make a difference...! Pass it on to your email list or at least those you think will listen..
Saturday, November 28, 2009
We Have Been Lied To About 'Climate Change'
Who's to blame for Climategate?
The publication of damning emails about climate change could literally change the world. Gordon Rayner reports.
The drab, drum-shaped home of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit is an anonymous little outpost, blending seamlessly with its chunky concrete neighbours on a windswept campus just outside Norwich. To the uninitiated, it has the look of a Seventies bus station waiting for the council to pull it down.
Unlikely as it may seem, however, this little corner of East Anglia is now ground zero in a controversy which just might influence the entire future of our planet.
A little over a week ago, hundreds of internal emails written by scientists working at the CRU were obtained by a hacker and posted on the internet, some of which appeared to show that researchers had deliberately faked evidence of global warming by manipulating statistics.
At first, the fallout was restricted to a row between climate change experts, played out in scientific journals and specialist internet blogs, but in the past few days, as the ripples have spread around the globe, "Climategate" has become a white hot political issue which has been seized upon by global warming sceptics and now threatens to overshadow next month's crucial climate change conference in Copenhagen.
In the US, where the CRU emails have been cited as proof of "the greatest act of scientific fraud in history", there are very real fears that hardline Republicans – together with powerful Right-wing media organisations – will use the scandal to scupper President Obama's proposed legislation to cap carbon emissions.
In Australia, the world's worst carbon dioxide polluter per capita, 10 opposition front bench MPs have resigned in protest at a proposed carbon bill, their resolve seemingly strengthened by the emergence of the emails.
And here in the UK, although the main political parties agree that global warming does exist and is man-made, there have been calls for the head of the CRU to resign over the scandal, and demands for a full-scale public inquiry from the former chancellor Lord Lawson who, this week, launched a new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, to challenge the consensus on global warming policy.
Phil Jones, the 57-year-old director of the CRU, is the man who has suddenly found himself the number one target of climate change conspiracy theorists the world over after he sent the most damaging of all the emails exposed by the anonymous hacker.
In one message, dated November 1999, he wrote: "I've just completed Mike's trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 to hide the decline."
Gotcha! say the global warming sceptics who have argued for years that average temperatures on Earth are, in reality, either stable or going down. Professor Jones defended himself by claiming the word "trick" was used out of context and simply referred to a legitimate method of handling data. But there was more.
An email sent by one of Prof Jones's colleagues said: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."
Prof Jones, whose department has for years refused to release its raw data on temperatures, wrote another email in which he said sceptics "have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send it to anyone". By chance, he now admits he has "accidentally" deleted some of the raw data.
Another message said the CRU's method of collating data "renders the station counts totally meaningless... so, we can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!"
Prof Jones, who at first refused to confirm even that the emails were genuine, finally issued a statement on Wednesday, in which he said: "My colleagues and I accept that some of the published emails do not read well." On that point, at least, no one is likely to argue with him.
Although Prof Jones is not what you could call a household name (though he soon might be) he is, without doubt, one of the world's most influential proponents of the theory of man-made global warming.
The CRU has the largest archive of global temperature data in the world, and its research formed the basis of the United Nations' key document on global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report of 2007.
But Prof Jones has been embroiled in controversy before. Three years ago, a report commissioned by the US House of Representatives energy and commerce committee claimed that a clique of just 43 scientists, including Prof Jones and one of his CRU colleagues, was stifling open debate on climate change.
Little wonder, then, that climate change deniers are hailing the emails as final proof that global warming is nothing more than a hoax which is being covered up by governments who have themselves been duped.
Suddenly, Phil Jones is the name on the lips of every Right-wing commentator in the US, some of whom have warned that President Obama is being tricked into making the most expensive mistake in history by backing emission caps and carbon trading legislation that will cost US taxpayers trillions of dollars.
Rupert Murdoch's Fox News has described the emails as a "game-changer" for Obama cap and trade bills. Fox's climate change commentator, John Lott, suggested that Prof Jones was guilty of an "unprecedented co-ordinated campaign to hide scientific information". Meanwhile Matt Drudge, arguably the most influential reporter on the internet and the man who broke the story of President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, has helped direct millions of hits to websites reporting on the email scandal by featuring it prominently on his Drudge Report website.
Nor are journalists the only ones predicting Climategate will influence US policy. Senator Peter King suggested the emails would "have some impact in slowing down or stopping the cap and trade bill" while fellow Republican senator James Inhofe has called for an investigation into the emails – some of which were sent to government-funded researchers in the US – and alerted the relevant US government agencies to their content.
President Obama's climate tsar Carol Browner has even been forced to make a public statement on the emails, insisting the science on global warming remains sound.
In Australia, meanwhile, the scandal has helped stoke a growing rift in the opposition Liberal Party, which had been poised to back Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's carbon pollution bill, but which is hopelessly split on the issue after 10 of its most senior politicians resigned, threatening to challenge party leader Malcolm Turnbull if he does not oppose the legislation.
Many critics have expressed incredulity that Prof Jones has not been sacked, but his fate is of little consequence compared with the effect the scandal could have on world climate change policy.
Prof Jones is in little doubt that the timing of the leak – two weeks before the start of the Copenhagen conference – was a "concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change" at the most sensitive possible time. Next month's Copenhagen conference has been billed as the last chance for world leaders to prevent an irreversible change to the planet's climate. Unless they can reach a binding agreement on reducing global emissions, mankind could face a bleak future, according to the majority of the scientific community.
The hacker who exposed the emails no doubt hopes Climategate will tip the scales decisively against an agreement – an outcome which is likely to be supported by a minority of hardliners in the US, such as Bryan Zumwalt, legislative counsel for Republican senator David Vitter, who said earlier this week that the CRU emails were evidence of what "could well be the greatest act of scientific fraud in history" and suggested that "nearly all of the international data and models supporting the theory of global warming would have been influenced by data corruption and fraud".
However Bob Ward, a climate change expert at the London School of Economics and Political Science, believes world leaders will pay little attention to the scandal surrounding the CRU, arguing that politics, not science, will decide the fate of the Copenhagen summit.
"The politicians won't be swayed by this," he said. "It's basic physics that the world is being warmed by greenhouse gases, and politicians can see through the sceptics' arguments. If Copenhagen fails to produce an agreement, it won't be because of these emails. And in the US, President Obama's cap and trade bills will be decided by 12 or 13 Democratic senators who represent states with large coal and oil reserves."
Mr Ward does not believe the emails reveal any evidence of impropriety, but supported Lord Lawson's calls for an independent investigation so the matter can be cleared up.
He said: "I don't believe there is any evidence here of fraud, but it's regrettable that this has happened and I regret the fact that some members of the research community have dismissed out of hand those who have tried to make a counter-argument."
Whether or not Climategate influences the outcome of the Copenhagen summit, it seems that its long-term legacy will be to make the ongoing war of words between "warmists" and "coolists" more poisonous than ever.
The publication of damning emails about climate change could literally change the world. Gordon Rayner reports.
The drab, drum-shaped home of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit is an anonymous little outpost, blending seamlessly with its chunky concrete neighbours on a windswept campus just outside Norwich. To the uninitiated, it has the look of a Seventies bus station waiting for the council to pull it down.
Unlikely as it may seem, however, this little corner of East Anglia is now ground zero in a controversy which just might influence the entire future of our planet.
A little over a week ago, hundreds of internal emails written by scientists working at the CRU were obtained by a hacker and posted on the internet, some of which appeared to show that researchers had deliberately faked evidence of global warming by manipulating statistics.
At first, the fallout was restricted to a row between climate change experts, played out in scientific journals and specialist internet blogs, but in the past few days, as the ripples have spread around the globe, "Climategate" has become a white hot political issue which has been seized upon by global warming sceptics and now threatens to overshadow next month's crucial climate change conference in Copenhagen.
In the US, where the CRU emails have been cited as proof of "the greatest act of scientific fraud in history", there are very real fears that hardline Republicans – together with powerful Right-wing media organisations – will use the scandal to scupper President Obama's proposed legislation to cap carbon emissions.
In Australia, the world's worst carbon dioxide polluter per capita, 10 opposition front bench MPs have resigned in protest at a proposed carbon bill, their resolve seemingly strengthened by the emergence of the emails.
And here in the UK, although the main political parties agree that global warming does exist and is man-made, there have been calls for the head of the CRU to resign over the scandal, and demands for a full-scale public inquiry from the former chancellor Lord Lawson who, this week, launched a new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, to challenge the consensus on global warming policy.
Phil Jones, the 57-year-old director of the CRU, is the man who has suddenly found himself the number one target of climate change conspiracy theorists the world over after he sent the most damaging of all the emails exposed by the anonymous hacker.
In one message, dated November 1999, he wrote: "I've just completed Mike's trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 to hide the decline."
Gotcha! say the global warming sceptics who have argued for years that average temperatures on Earth are, in reality, either stable or going down. Professor Jones defended himself by claiming the word "trick" was used out of context and simply referred to a legitimate method of handling data. But there was more.
An email sent by one of Prof Jones's colleagues said: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."
Prof Jones, whose department has for years refused to release its raw data on temperatures, wrote another email in which he said sceptics "have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send it to anyone". By chance, he now admits he has "accidentally" deleted some of the raw data.
Another message said the CRU's method of collating data "renders the station counts totally meaningless... so, we can have a proper result, but only by including a load of garbage!"
Prof Jones, who at first refused to confirm even that the emails were genuine, finally issued a statement on Wednesday, in which he said: "My colleagues and I accept that some of the published emails do not read well." On that point, at least, no one is likely to argue with him.
Although Prof Jones is not what you could call a household name (though he soon might be) he is, without doubt, one of the world's most influential proponents of the theory of man-made global warming.
The CRU has the largest archive of global temperature data in the world, and its research formed the basis of the United Nations' key document on global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report of 2007.
But Prof Jones has been embroiled in controversy before. Three years ago, a report commissioned by the US House of Representatives energy and commerce committee claimed that a clique of just 43 scientists, including Prof Jones and one of his CRU colleagues, was stifling open debate on climate change.
Little wonder, then, that climate change deniers are hailing the emails as final proof that global warming is nothing more than a hoax which is being covered up by governments who have themselves been duped.
Suddenly, Phil Jones is the name on the lips of every Right-wing commentator in the US, some of whom have warned that President Obama is being tricked into making the most expensive mistake in history by backing emission caps and carbon trading legislation that will cost US taxpayers trillions of dollars.
Rupert Murdoch's Fox News has described the emails as a "game-changer" for Obama cap and trade bills. Fox's climate change commentator, John Lott, suggested that Prof Jones was guilty of an "unprecedented co-ordinated campaign to hide scientific information". Meanwhile Matt Drudge, arguably the most influential reporter on the internet and the man who broke the story of President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, has helped direct millions of hits to websites reporting on the email scandal by featuring it prominently on his Drudge Report website.
Nor are journalists the only ones predicting Climategate will influence US policy. Senator Peter King suggested the emails would "have some impact in slowing down or stopping the cap and trade bill" while fellow Republican senator James Inhofe has called for an investigation into the emails – some of which were sent to government-funded researchers in the US – and alerted the relevant US government agencies to their content.
President Obama's climate tsar Carol Browner has even been forced to make a public statement on the emails, insisting the science on global warming remains sound.
In Australia, meanwhile, the scandal has helped stoke a growing rift in the opposition Liberal Party, which had been poised to back Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's carbon pollution bill, but which is hopelessly split on the issue after 10 of its most senior politicians resigned, threatening to challenge party leader Malcolm Turnbull if he does not oppose the legislation.
Many critics have expressed incredulity that Prof Jones has not been sacked, but his fate is of little consequence compared with the effect the scandal could have on world climate change policy.
Prof Jones is in little doubt that the timing of the leak – two weeks before the start of the Copenhagen conference – was a "concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change" at the most sensitive possible time. Next month's Copenhagen conference has been billed as the last chance for world leaders to prevent an irreversible change to the planet's climate. Unless they can reach a binding agreement on reducing global emissions, mankind could face a bleak future, according to the majority of the scientific community.
The hacker who exposed the emails no doubt hopes Climategate will tip the scales decisively against an agreement – an outcome which is likely to be supported by a minority of hardliners in the US, such as Bryan Zumwalt, legislative counsel for Republican senator David Vitter, who said earlier this week that the CRU emails were evidence of what "could well be the greatest act of scientific fraud in history" and suggested that "nearly all of the international data and models supporting the theory of global warming would have been influenced by data corruption and fraud".
However Bob Ward, a climate change expert at the London School of Economics and Political Science, believes world leaders will pay little attention to the scandal surrounding the CRU, arguing that politics, not science, will decide the fate of the Copenhagen summit.
"The politicians won't be swayed by this," he said. "It's basic physics that the world is being warmed by greenhouse gases, and politicians can see through the sceptics' arguments. If Copenhagen fails to produce an agreement, it won't be because of these emails. And in the US, President Obama's cap and trade bills will be decided by 12 or 13 Democratic senators who represent states with large coal and oil reserves."
Mr Ward does not believe the emails reveal any evidence of impropriety, but supported Lord Lawson's calls for an independent investigation so the matter can be cleared up.
He said: "I don't believe there is any evidence here of fraud, but it's regrettable that this has happened and I regret the fact that some members of the research community have dismissed out of hand those who have tried to make a counter-argument."
Whether or not Climategate influences the outcome of the Copenhagen summit, it seems that its long-term legacy will be to make the ongoing war of words between "warmists" and "coolists" more poisonous than ever.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The Danger In Change
Congress Must Stop the Trial in New York City
by Phyllis Schlafly
The U.S. Constitution can rescue us from the Obama administration's latest push toward "remaking America." Our Constitution is on the people's side to stop Obama from turning the judiciary into a platform for America's sworn enemies to spread their propaganda and even use our own laws against us.
Our Constitution's framers foresaw the probability that power-hungry men would try to take over the judiciary. So, they gave us the tools to maintain a government based on the separation of powers.
Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, has announced that he will move the trial of the confessed 9-11 terrorist mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as KSM, from a military court (where he ought to be tried) to a civilian court in New York City. Even worse, Holder plans to reward this terrorist with all the constitutional rights of any ordinary U.S. citizen defendant accused of an ordinary crime.
KSM fits the statutory definition of a terrorist: an "unlawful enemy combatant" who engaged in premeditated, politically motivated violence against noncombatant targets. He's not a U.S. citizen, and he was arrested outside the United States.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to override this Obama-Holder outrage. Congress can and should prevent this travesty, and the sooner the better.
We don't need any 2,000-page legislation -- a single sentence will suffice. "Federal district courts shall have no jurisdiction over any case involving unlawful enemy combatants, as that term is defined in the United States Code (Title 10, Section 948a)."
Constitutional authority is clear. Article III, Section I, states, "The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."
Nothing is new or irregular about Congress prescribing or limiting the kinds of cases that federal courts are permitted to hear. A long historical record conclusively proves that Congress has the power to regulate and limit court jurisdiction, that Congress has used this power repeatedly, and the courts have accepted it.
The great Chief Justice John Marshall asserted in an 1807 Supreme Court case that "courts which are created by written law, and whose jurisdiction is defined by written law, cannot transcend that jurisdiction."
In 2002, for example, Congress passed a law (at Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's urging) to prohibit federal courts from hearing cases about brush-clearing in his home state of South Dakota. Pending environmental lawsuits were immediately halted, and a court order that was already issued became null and void.
There are many bad consequences to staging the trial of KSM in New York City. If he is given all civilian constitutional rights, the government will be required to turn over to him vast amounts of U.S. intelligence and information that will imperil national security and put us in danger of future acts of terrorism.
The chief issue in the trial could become water-boarding rather than the Sept. 11 terrorist act that killed some 3,000 people. The Obama administration is infested with transnationalists -- i.e., lawyers who want to integrate foreign law or so-called international law into U.S. domestic law and impose it on Americans.
We wonder if the real purpose of moving this trial to New York is to put the George W. Bush administration on trial in a foreign court, as the far left has been demanding. The dangerous publicity and classified information emanating from the trial could give the opportunity to anti-Bush lawyers to take some of this material to the International Criminal Court (to which the United States does not even belong) or some other foreign court (such as Spain, which illegally tried Augusto Pinochet of Chile) and urge a trial against George W. Bush for war crimes.
Before Holder became attorney general, he and other Justice Department lawyers were in law firms that represented detainees at Guantanamo. Those lawyers should all be disqualified -- they shouldn't have ever been hired by the Justice Department.
The trial of KSM would be a media circus for many months, much like the O.J. Simpson trial, only 10 times as compelling. Defense lawyers will be eager to display their histrionics modeled on Johnnie Cochran's famous argument, "If the glove don't fit, you must acquit!"
What if KSM is acquitted? And released onto the streets of New York? Holder was pathetic in defending his New York decision at a congressional hearing, even assuring the congressmen that KSM would not be acquitted. Is Holder planning a show trial where the verdict is planned in advance?
Congress should act promptly to stop this dangerous move of KSM's trial from a military court to a federal court in New York. The Democratic Congress is loath to overrule Obama, but the longer this outrage festers in the public consciousness, the more it will damage the Obama administration.
by Phyllis Schlafly
The U.S. Constitution can rescue us from the Obama administration's latest push toward "remaking America." Our Constitution is on the people's side to stop Obama from turning the judiciary into a platform for America's sworn enemies to spread their propaganda and even use our own laws against us.
Our Constitution's framers foresaw the probability that power-hungry men would try to take over the judiciary. So, they gave us the tools to maintain a government based on the separation of powers.
Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, has announced that he will move the trial of the confessed 9-11 terrorist mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as KSM, from a military court (where he ought to be tried) to a civilian court in New York City. Even worse, Holder plans to reward this terrorist with all the constitutional rights of any ordinary U.S. citizen defendant accused of an ordinary crime.
KSM fits the statutory definition of a terrorist: an "unlawful enemy combatant" who engaged in premeditated, politically motivated violence against noncombatant targets. He's not a U.S. citizen, and he was arrested outside the United States.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to override this Obama-Holder outrage. Congress can and should prevent this travesty, and the sooner the better.
We don't need any 2,000-page legislation -- a single sentence will suffice. "Federal district courts shall have no jurisdiction over any case involving unlawful enemy combatants, as that term is defined in the United States Code (Title 10, Section 948a)."
Constitutional authority is clear. Article III, Section I, states, "The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."
Nothing is new or irregular about Congress prescribing or limiting the kinds of cases that federal courts are permitted to hear. A long historical record conclusively proves that Congress has the power to regulate and limit court jurisdiction, that Congress has used this power repeatedly, and the courts have accepted it.
The great Chief Justice John Marshall asserted in an 1807 Supreme Court case that "courts which are created by written law, and whose jurisdiction is defined by written law, cannot transcend that jurisdiction."
In 2002, for example, Congress passed a law (at Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's urging) to prohibit federal courts from hearing cases about brush-clearing in his home state of South Dakota. Pending environmental lawsuits were immediately halted, and a court order that was already issued became null and void.
There are many bad consequences to staging the trial of KSM in New York City. If he is given all civilian constitutional rights, the government will be required to turn over to him vast amounts of U.S. intelligence and information that will imperil national security and put us in danger of future acts of terrorism.
The chief issue in the trial could become water-boarding rather than the Sept. 11 terrorist act that killed some 3,000 people. The Obama administration is infested with transnationalists -- i.e., lawyers who want to integrate foreign law or so-called international law into U.S. domestic law and impose it on Americans.
We wonder if the real purpose of moving this trial to New York is to put the George W. Bush administration on trial in a foreign court, as the far left has been demanding. The dangerous publicity and classified information emanating from the trial could give the opportunity to anti-Bush lawyers to take some of this material to the International Criminal Court (to which the United States does not even belong) or some other foreign court (such as Spain, which illegally tried Augusto Pinochet of Chile) and urge a trial against George W. Bush for war crimes.
Before Holder became attorney general, he and other Justice Department lawyers were in law firms that represented detainees at Guantanamo. Those lawyers should all be disqualified -- they shouldn't have ever been hired by the Justice Department.
The trial of KSM would be a media circus for many months, much like the O.J. Simpson trial, only 10 times as compelling. Defense lawyers will be eager to display their histrionics modeled on Johnnie Cochran's famous argument, "If the glove don't fit, you must acquit!"
What if KSM is acquitted? And released onto the streets of New York? Holder was pathetic in defending his New York decision at a congressional hearing, even assuring the congressmen that KSM would not be acquitted. Is Holder planning a show trial where the verdict is planned in advance?
Congress should act promptly to stop this dangerous move of KSM's trial from a military court to a federal court in New York. The Democratic Congress is loath to overrule Obama, but the longer this outrage festers in the public consciousness, the more it will damage the Obama administration.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Military Pay
Military Pay
This is an Airman's response to Cindy Williams' editorial piece in the Washington Times about MILITARY PAY, it should be printed in all newspapers across America.
Ms. Cindy William wrote a piece for the Washington Times denouncing the pay raise(s) coming service members' way this year citing that she stated a 13% wage increase was more than they deserve.
A young airman from Hill AFB responds to her article below. He ought to get a bonus for this.
"Ms Williams:
I just had the pleasure of reading your column, "Our GI's earn enough" and I am a bit confused. Frankly, I'm wondering where this vaunted overpayment is going, because as far as I can tell, it disappears every month between DFAS (The Defense Finance and Accounting Service) and my bank account. Checking my latest earnings statement I see that I make $1,117.80 before taxes per month. After taxes, I take home $874.20. When I run that through the calculator, I come up with an annual salary of $13,413.60 before taxes, and $10,490.40 after.
I work in the Air Force Network Control Center where I am part of the team responsible for a 5,000 host computer network. I am involved with infrastructure segments, specifically with Cisco Systems equipment. A quick check under jobs for "Network Technicians" in the Washington, D.C. area reveals a position in my career field, requiring three years experience in my job. Amazingly, this job does NOT pay $13,413.60 a year. No, this job is being offered at $70,000 to $80,000 per annum........... I'm sure you can draw the obvious conclusions.
Given the tenor of your column, I would assume that you NEVER had the pleasure of serving your country in her armed forces.
Before you take it upon yourself to once more castigate congressional and DOD leadership for attempting to get the families in the military's lowest pay brackets off of WIC and food stamps, I suggest that you join a group of deploying soldiers headed for AFGHANISTAN; I leave the choice of service branch up to you. Whatever choice you make though, opt for the SIX month rotation: it will guarantee you the longest possible time away from your family and friends, thus giving you full "deployment experience."
As your group prepares to board the plane, make sure to note the spouses and children who are saying good-bye to their loved ones. Also take care to note that several families are still unsure of how they'll be able to make ends meet while the primary breadwinner is gone. Obviously they've been squandering the "vast" piles of cash the government has been giving them.
Try to deploy over a major holiday; Christmas and Thanksgiving are perennial favorites. And when you're actually over there, sitting in a foxhole, shivering against the cold desert night, and the flight sergeant tells you that there aren't enough people on shift to relieve you for chow, remember this: trade whatever MRE's (meal-ready-to-eat) you manage to get for the tuna noodle casserole or cheese tortellini, and add Tabasco to everything. This gives some flavor.
Talk to your loved ones as often as you are permitted; it won't be nearly long enough or often enough, but take what you can get and be thankful for it. You may have picked up on the fact that I disagree with most of the points you present in your open piece.
But, tomorrow from KABUL, I will defend to the death your right to say it.
You see, I am an American fighting man, a guarantor of your First Amendment right and every other right you cherish...On a daily basis, my brother and sister soldiers worldwide ensure that you and people like you can thumb your collective noses at us, all on a salary that is nothing short of pitiful and under conditions that would make most people cringe. We hemorrhage our best and brightest into the private sector because we can't offer the stability and pay of civilian companies.
And you, Ms. Williams, have the gall to say that we make more than we deserve?
A1C Michael Bragg, Hill AFB AFNCC
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Liar-in-Chief On Jobs
Stimulus Fraud
IBD Editorials
The Economy: We knew something was funny when the White House claimed that 640,000 to 1 million jobs had been created from this year's stimulus. What we didn't know was that it would turn into a massive fraud.
Not only have 640,000 new jobs not been created from the stimulus — an absurd claim, given the economy's loss of nearly 4 million payroll positions this year — but it now seems that even the jobs themselves are fictional.
Thanks to the digging of a number of data sleuths, it turns out that many of the jobs reported by states come from made-up congressional districts.
This would be funny if it weren't a criminal waste of public funds. And yet, G. Edward DeSeve, who runs the government's economic recovery program, says the errors are "relatively few" and "don't change the fundamental conclusions one can draw from the data."
Excuse us? The "relatively few" errors are in fact thousands in number. But that's the pernicious place we find ourselves today — a public official defending shoddy accounting that looks an awful lot like fraud to the tune of billions of dollars.
One example: the 15th Congressional District of Arizona, where 30 jobs were salvaged with $761,420 in spending, according to Recovery.gov, the official government Web site. As ABC News reports: "There is no 15th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight districts."
States as diverse as Kansas, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Ohio, Minnesota and West Virginia also reported phony jobs.
Stimulus jobs were also reported in 35 congressional districts in Washington, D.C., and four U.S. territories. The problem: None of those jurisdictions even has congressional districts.
All told, according to the useful Web site Watchdog.org, some $6.4 billion was spent to "create or save" 30,000 jobs in phantom districts. That comes out to about $225,000 per nonexistent job. And that's only what's been found so far.
The Washington Examiner's bogus-job count is even higher — at 75,343, a figure likely to climb as more are discovered.
Some cases were egregious. California's state university system took in $268.5 million in stimulus funds, claiming it "saved" 26,000 jobs. It has since admitted that few, if any, jobs were really at risk.
The government's response to all this? "Human beings make mistakes," shrugged Recovery Board spokesman Ed Pound on Monday. But by Tuesday, as the furor grew, the board's DeSeve was vowing to go through reports with a "fine-tooth comb."
But this should have been done all along. The official Web site vows that stimulus spending will "be subject to unprecedented transparency and accountability," and that inspectors general of 28 federal agencies will "continually review" their spending.
To our knowledge, however, none of the errors was found by an inspector general. All were discovered by private individuals curious about what their tax dollars were being spent on.
Imagine for a moment a CEO standing before the public and claiming similar bookkeeping errors. He'd be arrested for fraud, frog-marched from his office, tried, convicted and left to rot in jail.
We said from the start that the stimulus and TARP programs would be an invitation to fraud, waste and abuse. Sadly, this has proved true. Yet no one is likely to suffer so much as a reprimand.
As the White House talks about another stimulus, Americans need to know that the promises of transparency and openness in the first program haven't been kept. And that billions of their tax dollars are being wasted.
IBD Editorials
The Economy: We knew something was funny when the White House claimed that 640,000 to 1 million jobs had been created from this year's stimulus. What we didn't know was that it would turn into a massive fraud.
Not only have 640,000 new jobs not been created from the stimulus — an absurd claim, given the economy's loss of nearly 4 million payroll positions this year — but it now seems that even the jobs themselves are fictional.
Thanks to the digging of a number of data sleuths, it turns out that many of the jobs reported by states come from made-up congressional districts.
This would be funny if it weren't a criminal waste of public funds. And yet, G. Edward DeSeve, who runs the government's economic recovery program, says the errors are "relatively few" and "don't change the fundamental conclusions one can draw from the data."
Excuse us? The "relatively few" errors are in fact thousands in number. But that's the pernicious place we find ourselves today — a public official defending shoddy accounting that looks an awful lot like fraud to the tune of billions of dollars.
One example: the 15th Congressional District of Arizona, where 30 jobs were salvaged with $761,420 in spending, according to Recovery.gov, the official government Web site. As ABC News reports: "There is no 15th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight districts."
States as diverse as Kansas, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Ohio, Minnesota and West Virginia also reported phony jobs.
Stimulus jobs were also reported in 35 congressional districts in Washington, D.C., and four U.S. territories. The problem: None of those jurisdictions even has congressional districts.
All told, according to the useful Web site Watchdog.org, some $6.4 billion was spent to "create or save" 30,000 jobs in phantom districts. That comes out to about $225,000 per nonexistent job. And that's only what's been found so far.
The Washington Examiner's bogus-job count is even higher — at 75,343, a figure likely to climb as more are discovered.
Some cases were egregious. California's state university system took in $268.5 million in stimulus funds, claiming it "saved" 26,000 jobs. It has since admitted that few, if any, jobs were really at risk.
The government's response to all this? "Human beings make mistakes," shrugged Recovery Board spokesman Ed Pound on Monday. But by Tuesday, as the furor grew, the board's DeSeve was vowing to go through reports with a "fine-tooth comb."
But this should have been done all along. The official Web site vows that stimulus spending will "be subject to unprecedented transparency and accountability," and that inspectors general of 28 federal agencies will "continually review" their spending.
To our knowledge, however, none of the errors was found by an inspector general. All were discovered by private individuals curious about what their tax dollars were being spent on.
Imagine for a moment a CEO standing before the public and claiming similar bookkeeping errors. He'd be arrested for fraud, frog-marched from his office, tried, convicted and left to rot in jail.
We said from the start that the stimulus and TARP programs would be an invitation to fraud, waste and abuse. Sadly, this has proved true. Yet no one is likely to suffer so much as a reprimand.
As the White House talks about another stimulus, Americans need to know that the promises of transparency and openness in the first program haven't been kept. And that billions of their tax dollars are being wasted.
Former ACLU Attorney Fights Back
End ACLU's Assault On Memorials
By REES LLOYD
On Veterans Day, many Americans visited veterans memorials as Americans have for years. Today, however, veterans memorials on public land are under threat from establishment of religion clause lawsuits.
These lawsuits are being filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on the behalf of individuals who complain that they are offended by the sight of a cross at a veterans memorial. Although generally unknown to most Americans, the ACLU seeks and receives millions in judge-ordered, taxpayer-paid attorneys' fees in these cases.
The U.S. Supreme Court will render its decision this term in one such case (Buono v. Salazar) regarding a World War II veterans memorial cross in the Mojave Desert National Preserve ("Supreme Court at crossroads over fate of Mojave cross," Oct. 8). A similar case involving a veterans memorial cross at Mount Soledad is before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (Trunk, et al. v. U.S.). It also appears certain to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
At stake in these court cases is whether 300 million Americans shall have the right to choose how they will honor their war dead and other veterans or whether a veto power over those decisions shall be held by the ACLU or a single individual who claims "offense" at the sight of a cross honoring veterans. Thus, the importance of these court cases cannot be overstated.
However, I respectfully suggest that such issues, which fundamentally affect and shape our national culture and character, should not be decided by the courts. It is time for Congress to act to protect our veterans memorials from abusive Establishment Clause lawsuits by the ACLU, which has become the Taliban of American liberal secularism, and other fanatical organizations.
Congress is empowered under the Constitution to determine the jurisdiction of the courts other than the U.S. Supreme Court. Congress should exercise its authority to remove claims against veterans memorials and cemeteries from the jurisdiction of the courts. Congress should provide instead a right of redress before forums in which the public may participate and be heard, not just lawyers.
By doing so, Congress would also end the ACLU's exploitation of the Civil Rights Attorney Fees Act of 1976. That is, by filing lawsuits against veterans memorials, the Boy Scouts, public seals, and public symbols of America's history, the ACLU earns enormous profits from judge-ordered, taxpayer-paid attorney fee awards. The ACLU has used the threat of imposition of such attorney fees to coerce elected bodies to surrender to its demands without a fight, as the city of Redlands and the county of Los Angeles reluctantly did when the ACLU threatened to sue if they did not remove the cross from their official seals.
Riverside County, home to Riverside National Cemetery, has a particular interest in this issue. It is the decision of a U.S. district judge sitting in Riverside who ordered the Mojave Desert cross destroyed at the request of ACLU which is before the Supreme Court.
It was Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, who achieved legislation transferring the Mojave memorial site to private hands in exchange for five acres of private land to solve any perceived problem. The ACLU objected. The U.S. Supreme Court will decide.
It was veterans in American Legion Riverside Post 79 and District 21, which represents 6,000 wartime veterans in 22 posts in Riverside County, who sponsored American Legion Resolution 326, "Preserve Mojave Desert Veterans Memorial." This resolution, which I authored, led to the Legion's nationwide crusade to fight the ACLU in Congress and in the courts aided by the Alliance Defense Fund, Liberty Legal Institute, Thomas More Law Center and other organizations.
Furthermore, this effort was inspired by the late, legendary American Legionnaire and Riverside native Robert J. "Uncle Bobby" Castillo, a Purple Heart survivor of the D-Day landing, who said: "How can the ACLU sue our veterans memorials here in California at Mojave and at Mount Soledad? What about Arlington? Will they sue Arlington Cemetery next? Will they sue the American Cemetery in France at Normandy Beach? There are over 9,000 crosses and Stars of David there. We can't let the ACLU do this. We have to fight them. My buddies are buried there."
Congress, the courts, and all of us who are free because of veterans like Castillo, should hear, and heed, that good man's heartfelt words.
Rees Lloyd, of Banning, is a civil rights attorney and former ACLU of Southern California Foundation staff attorney. He is the co-founder and director of the Defense of Veterans Memorials Project of the American Legion Department of California.
By REES LLOYD
On Veterans Day, many Americans visited veterans memorials as Americans have for years. Today, however, veterans memorials on public land are under threat from establishment of religion clause lawsuits.
These lawsuits are being filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on the behalf of individuals who complain that they are offended by the sight of a cross at a veterans memorial. Although generally unknown to most Americans, the ACLU seeks and receives millions in judge-ordered, taxpayer-paid attorneys' fees in these cases.
The U.S. Supreme Court will render its decision this term in one such case (Buono v. Salazar) regarding a World War II veterans memorial cross in the Mojave Desert National Preserve ("Supreme Court at crossroads over fate of Mojave cross," Oct. 8). A similar case involving a veterans memorial cross at Mount Soledad is before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (Trunk, et al. v. U.S.). It also appears certain to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
At stake in these court cases is whether 300 million Americans shall have the right to choose how they will honor their war dead and other veterans or whether a veto power over those decisions shall be held by the ACLU or a single individual who claims "offense" at the sight of a cross honoring veterans. Thus, the importance of these court cases cannot be overstated.
However, I respectfully suggest that such issues, which fundamentally affect and shape our national culture and character, should not be decided by the courts. It is time for Congress to act to protect our veterans memorials from abusive Establishment Clause lawsuits by the ACLU, which has become the Taliban of American liberal secularism, and other fanatical organizations.
Congress is empowered under the Constitution to determine the jurisdiction of the courts other than the U.S. Supreme Court. Congress should exercise its authority to remove claims against veterans memorials and cemeteries from the jurisdiction of the courts. Congress should provide instead a right of redress before forums in which the public may participate and be heard, not just lawyers.
By doing so, Congress would also end the ACLU's exploitation of the Civil Rights Attorney Fees Act of 1976. That is, by filing lawsuits against veterans memorials, the Boy Scouts, public seals, and public symbols of America's history, the ACLU earns enormous profits from judge-ordered, taxpayer-paid attorney fee awards. The ACLU has used the threat of imposition of such attorney fees to coerce elected bodies to surrender to its demands without a fight, as the city of Redlands and the county of Los Angeles reluctantly did when the ACLU threatened to sue if they did not remove the cross from their official seals.
Riverside County, home to Riverside National Cemetery, has a particular interest in this issue. It is the decision of a U.S. district judge sitting in Riverside who ordered the Mojave Desert cross destroyed at the request of ACLU which is before the Supreme Court.
It was Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, who achieved legislation transferring the Mojave memorial site to private hands in exchange for five acres of private land to solve any perceived problem. The ACLU objected. The U.S. Supreme Court will decide.
It was veterans in American Legion Riverside Post 79 and District 21, which represents 6,000 wartime veterans in 22 posts in Riverside County, who sponsored American Legion Resolution 326, "Preserve Mojave Desert Veterans Memorial." This resolution, which I authored, led to the Legion's nationwide crusade to fight the ACLU in Congress and in the courts aided by the Alliance Defense Fund, Liberty Legal Institute, Thomas More Law Center and other organizations.
Furthermore, this effort was inspired by the late, legendary American Legionnaire and Riverside native Robert J. "Uncle Bobby" Castillo, a Purple Heart survivor of the D-Day landing, who said: "How can the ACLU sue our veterans memorials here in California at Mojave and at Mount Soledad? What about Arlington? Will they sue Arlington Cemetery next? Will they sue the American Cemetery in France at Normandy Beach? There are over 9,000 crosses and Stars of David there. We can't let the ACLU do this. We have to fight them. My buddies are buried there."
Congress, the courts, and all of us who are free because of veterans like Castillo, should hear, and heed, that good man's heartfelt words.
Rees Lloyd, of Banning, is a civil rights attorney and former ACLU of Southern California Foundation staff attorney. He is the co-founder and director of the Defense of Veterans Memorials Project of the American Legion Department of California.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Religious Principles- Worth Fighting For
Never Give Up, Never Surrender
by Gary DeMar, Nov 10, 2009
Alexis de Tocqueville was a keen observer of American society. Writing from the perspective of the 1830s, the French author concluded that the exceptional virtue, moral fiber, and self restraint shown by Americans were due to the extraordinary influence of the Christian faith in this land. “It was religion that gave birth to the English colonies in America,” Tocqueville wrote.[1]
The religion that Tocqueville wrote about was Christianity. “While the United States embraced ‘an infinite variety’ of religious sects, Christianity stood in this new land as an ‘established and irresistible fact which no one seeks to attack or defend.’”[2] Tocqueville considered America’s religious climate superior to that of Europe.
All foreign visitors to America, Tocqueville noted, agreed that sexual morality was “infinitely stricter” in the new United States than anywhere else in the world. In America, he reported, all books even novels supposed women to be chaste, and no one boasted of amorous adventures. He was astonished to discover that in cases of sexual immorality, both the seduced and the seducer were scorned; he was equally surprised to learn that rape was punishable by death, while in France it was difficult to get any jury to convict rapists, even given much lighter sentences.[3]
The Puritan ethic was solidly entrenched in America prior to Tocqueville’s visit. His observations were later incorporated in his celebrated Democracy in America. But by 1830, European Enlightenment philosophy had gained a foothold in America and was making a significant impact.
Because of the strong influence of Christianity, Enlightenment philosophies were diluted enough so their impact was minimal. Even so, the incremental strides the movement had made were real. Add to this Darwinian evolution (1859), combined with Higher Criticism as propounded by Graf and Wellhausen (1869–1878), and a volatile mix had been concocted to destroy biblical ethics.
Having turned away from the knowledge given by God, the Christian influence on the whole of culture has been lost. In Europe, including England, it took many years, in the United States only a few decades. In the United States, in the short span from the twenties to the sixties, we have seen a complete shift. Ours is a post Christian world in which Christianity, not only in the number of Christians but in cultural emphasis and cultural result, is no longer the consensus or ethos of our society.[4]
In all of this man became the interpreter of reality. The Bible was just another book about religion. What Tocqueville saw as differences between European and American worldviews have now become nearly indistinguishable, especially at the academic and political levels. The rallying cry of the nineteenth century was “freedom” without restraint. “To be free was to be modern; to be modern was to take chances. The American century was to be the century of unleashing, of breaking away, at first from the 19th century (as Freud, Proust, Einstein and others had done), and eventually from any constraints at all.”[5]
What we are seeing today is the fruit of a nation’s steady but determined rejection of the Bible. “Everywhere this thinking, rooted in godlessness, bears fruit today we can see that the fruit is bitter. In all areas of life man is trying to take control of his own ship. Meanwhile the ship is out of control, and many live in a state of helpless perplexity.”[6]
The libertines began to turn the ship slowly. They knew it would take time. In terms of television, there is a starting date: November 1, 1972 with the airing of That Certain Summer. This ABC TV-movie featured Hal Holbrook as Doug Salter, a divorced father whose son comes to stay with him for the summer. The boy is shocked to learn that his father has chosen homosexuality and to live with his “lover” (played by Martin Sheen).
The taboo had been broken, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put the taboo back together again. That Certain Summer was the vehicle the homosexual community needed to make their lifestyle seem normative. They were not after drama, “they wanted propaganda.”[7] Even though homosexuals are a minority, they persisted in normalizing their worldview. They never give up; they never surrender. We’ve won a few small battles in the past week. The Maine anti-homosexual marriage reversal was big. Do you think this 31st setback is going to stop the homosexuals? Don’t count on it. The New York legislature is about to vote on homosexual marriage. It will probably pass. Then it will be up to the voters . . . again!
Endnotes:
[1] Quoted in Allan C. Carlson, “Our National Self Confidence: Understanding its Decline and Supporting its Revival” (Rockford, IL: The Rockford Institute, 1984), 6.
[2] Carlson, “Our National Self Confidence,” 6.
[3] Carlson, “Our National Self Confidence,” 7.
[4] Francis A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1984), 28–29.
[5] Roger Rosenblatt, “What Really Mattered?,” Time (October 1983), 25. Emphasis added.
[6] Eta Linnemann, Historical Criticism of the Bible: Methodology or Ideology?, trans. Robert W. Yarbrough (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1990), 34.
[7] Richard Levinson and William Link, Stay Tuned: An Inside Look at the Making of Prime Time Television (New York, St. Martin’s, 1981), 133. Quoted in Montgomery, Target: Prime Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 77.
by Gary DeMar, Nov 10, 2009
Alexis de Tocqueville was a keen observer of American society. Writing from the perspective of the 1830s, the French author concluded that the exceptional virtue, moral fiber, and self restraint shown by Americans were due to the extraordinary influence of the Christian faith in this land. “It was religion that gave birth to the English colonies in America,” Tocqueville wrote.[1]
The religion that Tocqueville wrote about was Christianity. “While the United States embraced ‘an infinite variety’ of religious sects, Christianity stood in this new land as an ‘established and irresistible fact which no one seeks to attack or defend.’”[2] Tocqueville considered America’s religious climate superior to that of Europe.
All foreign visitors to America, Tocqueville noted, agreed that sexual morality was “infinitely stricter” in the new United States than anywhere else in the world. In America, he reported, all books even novels supposed women to be chaste, and no one boasted of amorous adventures. He was astonished to discover that in cases of sexual immorality, both the seduced and the seducer were scorned; he was equally surprised to learn that rape was punishable by death, while in France it was difficult to get any jury to convict rapists, even given much lighter sentences.[3]
The Puritan ethic was solidly entrenched in America prior to Tocqueville’s visit. His observations were later incorporated in his celebrated Democracy in America. But by 1830, European Enlightenment philosophy had gained a foothold in America and was making a significant impact.
Because of the strong influence of Christianity, Enlightenment philosophies were diluted enough so their impact was minimal. Even so, the incremental strides the movement had made were real. Add to this Darwinian evolution (1859), combined with Higher Criticism as propounded by Graf and Wellhausen (1869–1878), and a volatile mix had been concocted to destroy biblical ethics.
Having turned away from the knowledge given by God, the Christian influence on the whole of culture has been lost. In Europe, including England, it took many years, in the United States only a few decades. In the United States, in the short span from the twenties to the sixties, we have seen a complete shift. Ours is a post Christian world in which Christianity, not only in the number of Christians but in cultural emphasis and cultural result, is no longer the consensus or ethos of our society.[4]
In all of this man became the interpreter of reality. The Bible was just another book about religion. What Tocqueville saw as differences between European and American worldviews have now become nearly indistinguishable, especially at the academic and political levels. The rallying cry of the nineteenth century was “freedom” without restraint. “To be free was to be modern; to be modern was to take chances. The American century was to be the century of unleashing, of breaking away, at first from the 19th century (as Freud, Proust, Einstein and others had done), and eventually from any constraints at all.”[5]
What we are seeing today is the fruit of a nation’s steady but determined rejection of the Bible. “Everywhere this thinking, rooted in godlessness, bears fruit today we can see that the fruit is bitter. In all areas of life man is trying to take control of his own ship. Meanwhile the ship is out of control, and many live in a state of helpless perplexity.”[6]
The libertines began to turn the ship slowly. They knew it would take time. In terms of television, there is a starting date: November 1, 1972 with the airing of That Certain Summer. This ABC TV-movie featured Hal Holbrook as Doug Salter, a divorced father whose son comes to stay with him for the summer. The boy is shocked to learn that his father has chosen homosexuality and to live with his “lover” (played by Martin Sheen).
The taboo had been broken, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put the taboo back together again. That Certain Summer was the vehicle the homosexual community needed to make their lifestyle seem normative. They were not after drama, “they wanted propaganda.”[7] Even though homosexuals are a minority, they persisted in normalizing their worldview. They never give up; they never surrender. We’ve won a few small battles in the past week. The Maine anti-homosexual marriage reversal was big. Do you think this 31st setback is going to stop the homosexuals? Don’t count on it. The New York legislature is about to vote on homosexual marriage. It will probably pass. Then it will be up to the voters . . . again!
Endnotes:
[1] Quoted in Allan C. Carlson, “Our National Self Confidence: Understanding its Decline and Supporting its Revival” (Rockford, IL: The Rockford Institute, 1984), 6.
[2] Carlson, “Our National Self Confidence,” 6.
[3] Carlson, “Our National Self Confidence,” 7.
[4] Francis A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1984), 28–29.
[5] Roger Rosenblatt, “What Really Mattered?,” Time (October 1983), 25. Emphasis added.
[6] Eta Linnemann, Historical Criticism of the Bible: Methodology or Ideology?, trans. Robert W. Yarbrough (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1990), 34.
[7] Richard Levinson and William Link, Stay Tuned: An Inside Look at the Making of Prime Time Television (New York, St. Martin’s, 1981), 133. Quoted in Montgomery, Target: Prime Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 77.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Dems Bribe To Pass Healthcare
OBAMACARE ENDORSEMENTS: WHAT THE BRIBE WAS
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
As the suicidal Democratic congressmen proceed to rubber-stamp the Obama healthcare reform despite the drubbing their party took in the '09 elections, the president trotted out the endorsements of the AMA and the AARP to stimulate support. But these -- and the other endorsements -- his package has received are all bought and paid for.
Here are the deals:
* The American Medical Association (AMA) was facing a 21 percent cut in physicians' reimbursements under the current law. Obama promised to kill the cut if they backed his bill. The cuts are the fruit of a law requiring annual 5-6 percent reductions in doctor reimbursements for treating Medicare patients. Bravely, each year Congress has rolled the cuts over, suspending them but not repealing them. So each year, the accumulated cuts threaten doctors. By now, they have risen to 21 percent. With this blackmail leverage, Obama compelled the AMA to support his bill...or else!
* The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill. Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company (through its subsidiary company). It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off. But President Bush-43 passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues.
Presto! Obama solved their problem. He eliminates subsidies for Medicare Advantage. The elderly will have to pay more for coverage under Medigap, but the AARP -- which supposedly represents them -- will make more money. (If this galls you, join the American Seniors Association, the alternative group; contact sbarton@americanseniors.org. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .)
* The drug industry backed ObamaCare and, in return, got a 10-year limit of $80 billion on cuts in prescription drug costs. (A drop in the bucket of their almost $3 trillion projected cost over the next decade.) They also got administration assurances that it will continue to bar lower-cost Canadian drugs from coming into the U.S. All it had to do was put its formidable advertising budget at the disposal of the administration.
* Insurance companies got access to 40 million potential new customers. But when the Senate Finance Committee lowered the fine that would be imposed on those who don't buy insurance from $3,500 to $1,500, the insurance companies jumped ship and now oppose the bill, albeit for the worst of motives.
The only industry that refused to knuckle under was the medical device makers. They stood for principle and wouldn't go along with Obama's blackmail. So the Senate Finance Committee retaliated by imposing a tax on medical devices such as automated wheelchairs, pacemakers, arterial stents, prosthetic limbs, artificial knees and hips and other necessary accoutrements of healthcare.
So these endorsements are not freely given, but bought and paid for by an administration that is intent on passing its program at any cost.
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
As the suicidal Democratic congressmen proceed to rubber-stamp the Obama healthcare reform despite the drubbing their party took in the '09 elections, the president trotted out the endorsements of the AMA and the AARP to stimulate support. But these -- and the other endorsements -- his package has received are all bought and paid for.
Here are the deals:
* The American Medical Association (AMA) was facing a 21 percent cut in physicians' reimbursements under the current law. Obama promised to kill the cut if they backed his bill. The cuts are the fruit of a law requiring annual 5-6 percent reductions in doctor reimbursements for treating Medicare patients. Bravely, each year Congress has rolled the cuts over, suspending them but not repealing them. So each year, the accumulated cuts threaten doctors. By now, they have risen to 21 percent. With this blackmail leverage, Obama compelled the AMA to support his bill...or else!
* The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill. Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company (through its subsidiary company). It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off. But President Bush-43 passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues.
Presto! Obama solved their problem. He eliminates subsidies for Medicare Advantage. The elderly will have to pay more for coverage under Medigap, but the AARP -- which supposedly represents them -- will make more money. (If this galls you, join the American Seniors Association, the alternative group; contact sbarton@americanseniors.org. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .)
* The drug industry backed ObamaCare and, in return, got a 10-year limit of $80 billion on cuts in prescription drug costs. (A drop in the bucket of their almost $3 trillion projected cost over the next decade.) They also got administration assurances that it will continue to bar lower-cost Canadian drugs from coming into the U.S. All it had to do was put its formidable advertising budget at the disposal of the administration.
* Insurance companies got access to 40 million potential new customers. But when the Senate Finance Committee lowered the fine that would be imposed on those who don't buy insurance from $3,500 to $1,500, the insurance companies jumped ship and now oppose the bill, albeit for the worst of motives.
The only industry that refused to knuckle under was the medical device makers. They stood for principle and wouldn't go along with Obama's blackmail. So the Senate Finance Committee retaliated by imposing a tax on medical devices such as automated wheelchairs, pacemakers, arterial stents, prosthetic limbs, artificial knees and hips and other necessary accoutrements of healthcare.
So these endorsements are not freely given, but bought and paid for by an administration that is intent on passing its program at any cost.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Climate Change Hoax Exposed, Again
Settled Science?
President Obama, along with other believers, declares the greenhouse-gas hypothesis of global warming to be established beyond doubt. Why then are there more than 20 conflicting versions of the hypothesis?
Frank Madarasz emailed the following letter from Professor Howard Hayden, formerly a physics professor at the University of Connecticut. The questions about the validity of the greenhouse-gas hypothesis that he lists will, of course, not even be considered by people like President Obama, for whom there can be no admissible contradictory evidence.
October 27, 2009
The Honorable Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20460
Dear Administrator Jackson:
I write in regard to the Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, Proposed Rule, 74 Fed. Reg. 18,886 (Apr. 24, 2009), the so-called “Endangerment Finding.”
It has been often said that the “science is settled” on the issue of CO2 and climate. Let me put this claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false.
The letter is s, the one that changes model into models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.
Alternatively, one may ask which one of the twenty-some models settled the science so that all the rest could be discarded along with the research funds that have kept those models alive.
We can take this further. Not a single climate model predicted the current cooling phase. If the
science were settled, the model (singular) would have predicted it.
Let me next address the horror story that we are approaching (or have passed) a “tipping point.” Anybody who has worked with amplifiers knows about tipping points. The output “goes to the rail.” Not only that, but it stays there. That’s the official worry coming from the likes of James Hansen (of NASAGISS) and Al Gore.
But therein lies the proof that we are nowhere near a tipping point. The earth, it seems, has seen times when the CO2 concentration was up to 8,000 ppm, and that did not lead to a tipping point. If it did, we would not be here talking about it. In fact, seen on the long scale, the CO2 concentration in the present cycle of glacials (ca. 200 ppm) and interglacials (ca. 300-400 ppm) is lower than it has been for the last 300 million years.
Global-warming alarmists tell us that the rising CO2 concentration is (A) anthropogenic and (B) leading
to global warming.
(A) CO2 concentration has risen and fallen in the past with no help from mankind. The present rise began in the 1700s, long before humans could have made a meaningful contribution. Alarmists have failed to ask, let alone answer, what the CO2 level would be today if we had never burned any fuels. They simply assume that it would be the “pre-industrial” value.
a. The solubility of CO2 in water decreases as water warms, and increases as water cools. The warming of the earth since the Little Ice Age has thus caused the oceans to emit CO2 into the atmosphere.
(B) The first principle of causality is that the cause has to come before the effect. The historical record shows that climate changes precede CO2 changes. How, then, can one conclude that CO2 is responsible for the current warming?
Nobody doubts that CO2 has some greenhouse effect, and nobody doubts that CO2 concentration is increasing. But what would we have to fear if CO2 and temperature actually increased?
• A warmer world is a better world. Look at weather-related death rates in winter and in summer, and the case is overwhelming that warmer is better.
• The higher the CO2 levels, the more vibrant is the biosphere, as numerous experiments in greenhouses have shown. But a quick trip to the museum can make that case in spades. Those huge dinosaurs could not exist anywhere on the earth today because the land is not productive enough. CO2 is plant food, pure and simple.
• CO2 is not pollution by any reasonable definition.
• A warmer world begets more precipitation.
• All computer models predict a smaller temperature gradient between the poles and the equator. Necessarily, this would mean fewer and less violent storms.
• The melting point of ice is 0 ºC in Antarctica, just as it is everywhere else. The highest recorded temperature at the South Pole is –14 ºC, and the lowest is –117 ºC. How, pray, will a putative few degrees of warming melt all the ice and inundate Florida, as is claimed by the warming alarmists?
Consider the change in vocabulary that has occurred. The term global warming has given way to the term climate change, because the former is not supported by the data. The latter term, climate change, admits of all kinds of illogical attributions. If it warms up, that’s climate change. If it cools down, ditto. Any change whatsoever can be said by alarmists to be proof of climate change.
In a way, we have been here before. Lord Kelvin “proved” that the earth could not possibly be as old as the geologists said. He “proved” it using the conservation of energy. What he didn’t know was that nuclear energy, not gravitation, provides the internal heat of the sun and the earth.
Similarly, the global-warming alarmists have “proved” that CO2 causes global warming. Except when it doesn’t.
To put it fairly but bluntly, the global-warming alarmists have relied on a pathetic version of science in which computer models take precedence over data, and numerical averages of computer outputs are believed to be able to predict the future climate. It would be a travesty if the EPA were to countenance such nonsense.
Best Regards,
Howard C. Hayden
Professor Emeritus of Physics, UConn
President Obama, along with other believers, declares the greenhouse-gas hypothesis of global warming to be established beyond doubt. Why then are there more than 20 conflicting versions of the hypothesis?
Frank Madarasz emailed the following letter from Professor Howard Hayden, formerly a physics professor at the University of Connecticut. The questions about the validity of the greenhouse-gas hypothesis that he lists will, of course, not even be considered by people like President Obama, for whom there can be no admissible contradictory evidence.
October 27, 2009
The Honorable Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20460
Dear Administrator Jackson:
I write in regard to the Proposed Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, Proposed Rule, 74 Fed. Reg. 18,886 (Apr. 24, 2009), the so-called “Endangerment Finding.”
It has been often said that the “science is settled” on the issue of CO2 and climate. Let me put this claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false.
The letter is s, the one that changes model into models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.
Alternatively, one may ask which one of the twenty-some models settled the science so that all the rest could be discarded along with the research funds that have kept those models alive.
We can take this further. Not a single climate model predicted the current cooling phase. If the
science were settled, the model (singular) would have predicted it.
Let me next address the horror story that we are approaching (or have passed) a “tipping point.” Anybody who has worked with amplifiers knows about tipping points. The output “goes to the rail.” Not only that, but it stays there. That’s the official worry coming from the likes of James Hansen (of NASAGISS) and Al Gore.
But therein lies the proof that we are nowhere near a tipping point. The earth, it seems, has seen times when the CO2 concentration was up to 8,000 ppm, and that did not lead to a tipping point. If it did, we would not be here talking about it. In fact, seen on the long scale, the CO2 concentration in the present cycle of glacials (ca. 200 ppm) and interglacials (ca. 300-400 ppm) is lower than it has been for the last 300 million years.
Global-warming alarmists tell us that the rising CO2 concentration is (A) anthropogenic and (B) leading
to global warming.
(A) CO2 concentration has risen and fallen in the past with no help from mankind. The present rise began in the 1700s, long before humans could have made a meaningful contribution. Alarmists have failed to ask, let alone answer, what the CO2 level would be today if we had never burned any fuels. They simply assume that it would be the “pre-industrial” value.
a. The solubility of CO2 in water decreases as water warms, and increases as water cools. The warming of the earth since the Little Ice Age has thus caused the oceans to emit CO2 into the atmosphere.
(B) The first principle of causality is that the cause has to come before the effect. The historical record shows that climate changes precede CO2 changes. How, then, can one conclude that CO2 is responsible for the current warming?
Nobody doubts that CO2 has some greenhouse effect, and nobody doubts that CO2 concentration is increasing. But what would we have to fear if CO2 and temperature actually increased?
• A warmer world is a better world. Look at weather-related death rates in winter and in summer, and the case is overwhelming that warmer is better.
• The higher the CO2 levels, the more vibrant is the biosphere, as numerous experiments in greenhouses have shown. But a quick trip to the museum can make that case in spades. Those huge dinosaurs could not exist anywhere on the earth today because the land is not productive enough. CO2 is plant food, pure and simple.
• CO2 is not pollution by any reasonable definition.
• A warmer world begets more precipitation.
• All computer models predict a smaller temperature gradient between the poles and the equator. Necessarily, this would mean fewer and less violent storms.
• The melting point of ice is 0 ºC in Antarctica, just as it is everywhere else. The highest recorded temperature at the South Pole is –14 ºC, and the lowest is –117 ºC. How, pray, will a putative few degrees of warming melt all the ice and inundate Florida, as is claimed by the warming alarmists?
Consider the change in vocabulary that has occurred. The term global warming has given way to the term climate change, because the former is not supported by the data. The latter term, climate change, admits of all kinds of illogical attributions. If it warms up, that’s climate change. If it cools down, ditto. Any change whatsoever can be said by alarmists to be proof of climate change.
In a way, we have been here before. Lord Kelvin “proved” that the earth could not possibly be as old as the geologists said. He “proved” it using the conservation of energy. What he didn’t know was that nuclear energy, not gravitation, provides the internal heat of the sun and the earth.
Similarly, the global-warming alarmists have “proved” that CO2 causes global warming. Except when it doesn’t.
To put it fairly but bluntly, the global-warming alarmists have relied on a pathetic version of science in which computer models take precedence over data, and numerical averages of computer outputs are believed to be able to predict the future climate. It would be a travesty if the EPA were to countenance such nonsense.
Best Regards,
Howard C. Hayden
Professor Emeritus of Physics, UConn
Obama's Czars Want To Change Everything
Obama Makes Polygamy a 21st Century Issue
by Phyllis Schlafly
No sooner had we celebrated the exit of Barack Obama's Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, because of his Communist connections, another off-the-wall Administration embarrassment surfaced. President Obama nominated for commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) a woman who signed a radical manifesto endorsing polygamy.
We thought our nation had settled the polygamy issue a century and a half ago, but this nomination makes it a 21st century controversy. Obama's nominee for the EEOC, a lesbian law-school professor named Chai R. Feldblum, signed a 2006 manifesto endorsing polygamous households (i.e., "in which there is more than one conjugal partner").
This document, entitled "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families & Relationships," argues that traditional marriage "should not be legally and economically privileged above all others." The American people obviously think otherwise, and current laws reflect our wishes.
Feldblum is not the only pro-polygamy Obama appointee. His Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein, wrote a book in 2008 called "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness" in which he urged that "the word marriage would no longer appear in any laws, and marriage licenses would no longer be offered or recognized by any level of government."
Sunstein argues that traditional marriage discriminates against single people by imposing "serious economic and material disadvantages." He asks, "Why not leave people's relationships to their own choices, subject to the judgments of private organizations, religious and otherwise?"
Sunstein also suggests "routine removal" of human organs because "the state owns the rights to body parts of people who are dead or in certain hopeless conditions, and it can remove their organs without asking anyone's permission."
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was passed in 1996 by overwhelming majorities in Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has identified more than 1,000 federal laws that are based on the traditional definition of marriage, including the tax laws that permit married couples the advantage of filing joint income tax returns and the Social Security benefits awarded to fulltime homemakers, both very popular federal laws.
The peculiar push to recognize polygamy as just another variety of marriage is a predictable and logical corollary of the political movement to recognize same-sex marriage. If our government cannot define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, it follows that there can be no law against the union of a man and several women.
For years, polygamy, even though it is totally demeaning to women, has been embraced by the powerful American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Polygamy is one of the many controversial issues that were not raised during ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg's so-friendly Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
The ACLU's feminist president, Nadine Strossen, stated in a speech at Yale University in June 2005 that the ACLU defends "the right of individuals to engage in polygamy." On October 15, 2006, in a high-profile debate against Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Strossen stated that the ACLU supports the right to polygamy.
Speaking to the Federalist Society on November 18, 2006, the ACLU's executive director, Anthony Romero, confirmed his organization's support of polygamy.
The massive immigration that the United States has accepted in recent years includes large numbers of immigrants from Third World countries that approve of polygamy as well as marriage to children and to close relatives. We wonder if polygamists have been admitted to the U.S. and if they are continuing these customs in U.S. neighborhoods.
Attacks on the traditional legal definition of marriage come from the gay lobby seeking social recognition of their lifestyle, from the anti-marriage feminists, and from some libertarians who believe marriage should be merely a private affair, none of the government's business. These libertarians want to deny government the right to define marriage, set its standards, or issue marriage licenses.
Government now has and should have a very important role in defining who may get a license to marry. In America, it is and should be a criminal offense to marry more than one person at a time, or marry a child or a close relative, even though such practices are common in some foreign countries.
In Socialist Canada, which has already approved same-sex marriage, polygamy has suddenly become a live issue. British Columbia's Supreme Court is now being asked to decide if polygamy should remain illegal.
We may have to depend on the Republican Party to maintain government's proper role in defining and protecting traditional marriage. The very first Platform adopted by the Republican Party, in 1856, condemned polygamy and slavery as the "twin relics of barbarism," and the 2008 Republican Platform calls for "a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage as a union of a man and a woman, so that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it."
by Phyllis Schlafly
No sooner had we celebrated the exit of Barack Obama's Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, because of his Communist connections, another off-the-wall Administration embarrassment surfaced. President Obama nominated for commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) a woman who signed a radical manifesto endorsing polygamy.
We thought our nation had settled the polygamy issue a century and a half ago, but this nomination makes it a 21st century controversy. Obama's nominee for the EEOC, a lesbian law-school professor named Chai R. Feldblum, signed a 2006 manifesto endorsing polygamous households (i.e., "in which there is more than one conjugal partner").
This document, entitled "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families & Relationships," argues that traditional marriage "should not be legally and economically privileged above all others." The American people obviously think otherwise, and current laws reflect our wishes.
Feldblum is not the only pro-polygamy Obama appointee. His Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein, wrote a book in 2008 called "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness" in which he urged that "the word marriage would no longer appear in any laws, and marriage licenses would no longer be offered or recognized by any level of government."
Sunstein argues that traditional marriage discriminates against single people by imposing "serious economic and material disadvantages." He asks, "Why not leave people's relationships to their own choices, subject to the judgments of private organizations, religious and otherwise?"
Sunstein also suggests "routine removal" of human organs because "the state owns the rights to body parts of people who are dead or in certain hopeless conditions, and it can remove their organs without asking anyone's permission."
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was passed in 1996 by overwhelming majorities in Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has identified more than 1,000 federal laws that are based on the traditional definition of marriage, including the tax laws that permit married couples the advantage of filing joint income tax returns and the Social Security benefits awarded to fulltime homemakers, both very popular federal laws.
The peculiar push to recognize polygamy as just another variety of marriage is a predictable and logical corollary of the political movement to recognize same-sex marriage. If our government cannot define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, it follows that there can be no law against the union of a man and several women.
For years, polygamy, even though it is totally demeaning to women, has been embraced by the powerful American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Polygamy is one of the many controversial issues that were not raised during ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg's so-friendly Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
The ACLU's feminist president, Nadine Strossen, stated in a speech at Yale University in June 2005 that the ACLU defends "the right of individuals to engage in polygamy." On October 15, 2006, in a high-profile debate against Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Strossen stated that the ACLU supports the right to polygamy.
Speaking to the Federalist Society on November 18, 2006, the ACLU's executive director, Anthony Romero, confirmed his organization's support of polygamy.
The massive immigration that the United States has accepted in recent years includes large numbers of immigrants from Third World countries that approve of polygamy as well as marriage to children and to close relatives. We wonder if polygamists have been admitted to the U.S. and if they are continuing these customs in U.S. neighborhoods.
Attacks on the traditional legal definition of marriage come from the gay lobby seeking social recognition of their lifestyle, from the anti-marriage feminists, and from some libertarians who believe marriage should be merely a private affair, none of the government's business. These libertarians want to deny government the right to define marriage, set its standards, or issue marriage licenses.
Government now has and should have a very important role in defining who may get a license to marry. In America, it is and should be a criminal offense to marry more than one person at a time, or marry a child or a close relative, even though such practices are common in some foreign countries.
In Socialist Canada, which has already approved same-sex marriage, polygamy has suddenly become a live issue. British Columbia's Supreme Court is now being asked to decide if polygamy should remain illegal.
We may have to depend on the Republican Party to maintain government's proper role in defining and protecting traditional marriage. The very first Platform adopted by the Republican Party, in 1856, condemned polygamy and slavery as the "twin relics of barbarism," and the 2008 Republican Platform calls for "a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage as a union of a man and a woman, so that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it."
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
NEA Teaching Communism In Schools
NEA raves to teachers about Alinsky 'guidebook'
Recommends texts by radical community organizer who 'encouraged positive social change'
by Chelsea Schilling
The National Education Association has made a glowing assessment of radical socialist community organizer Saul Alinsky and is enthusiastically recommending American public school teachers read two of his books, including one dedicated to Satan.
On its website, the NEA dubs Alinsky "an inspiration to anyone contemplating action in their community! And to every organizer!"
It recommends Alinsky's "Reveille for Radicals," a 1946 book about the principles and tactics of "community organizing," and "Rules for Radicals," a 1971 text that articulated a socialist strategy for gaining political power to redistribute wealth from the "haves" to the "have-nots."
The NEA, the largest labor union in the United States, represents public school teachers, college and university faculty, retired education employees and college students preparing to become teachers.
The association describes Alinsky as a "master political agitator, tactical planner and social organizer" who wrote a "guidebook for those who are out to change things."
"He sets down what the goal is: a society where people are free to live, and also aren't starving in the streets. A society where there is legal and economic justice," the NEA explains to educators. "Then he sets out to say how to get there."
The NEA continues, "Alinsky's goal seems to be to encourage positive social change by equipping activists with a realistic view of the world, a kind of preemptive disillusionment. If a person already knows what evil the world is capable of, then perhaps the surprise factor can be eliminated, making the person a more effective activist. Alinsky further seems to be encouraging the budding activist not to worry to [sic] much about getting his or her hands dirty. It's all a part of the job, he seems to say."
NEA promotes books by Saul Alinsky as recommended reading
As WND reported, Alinsky, the father of community organizing, dreamed of socialism one day replacing the "jungle" of American capitalism. He wrote that he hoped "for a future where the means of production will be owned by all of the people instead of just a comparative handful."
Alinsky dedicated the first edition of his book, "Rules for Radicals," to Satan: "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer."
Discover the Networks describes Alinsky as "an avatar of the post-modern Left" who studied criminology as a graduate student at the University of Chicago and became friends with Al Capone and his mobsters. He advocated a wholesale revolution so a supposedly oppressed population could acquire power and radically transform America's social and economic structure. He sought to foment public discontent to spark a social uprising.
"A reformation means that the masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don't know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless," Alinsky wrote in "Rules for Radicals." "They won't act for change but won't strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution."
In "Alinsky for Teacher Organizers," a 1972 document written for use in training teachers, NEA training consultant J. Michael Arisman explained that Alinsky believed the teacher association's real power base was in the community. He advocated organizing the community by using the natural interest in the children to send teachers into children's homes
so they could develop relationships with parents.
"He would assert that if the teacher association is successful in organizing the community for education ends, it would have no problem getting or maintaining its membership," Arisman wrote. "At the same time, the allies made by a multi-issue association will be valuable at contract time."
Action is critical, especially with the white middle class, Alinsky argued, because that group is not accustomed to action and will want to quit leadership training after the first time.
"Generally, the Alinsky advice on tactics is guerilla war advice," Arisman wrote. "To win, know the enemy, divide the enemy. Know who all the players are, conduct the action on several levels and personalize the conflict."
Arisman wrote that Alinsky's strategic and tactical essence was built around conflict.
"He uses confrontation much as teacher groups have used confrontation at the negotiations table in order to buy a piece of the power," he wrote. "Alinsky does not believe you can reason away from the power groups slices of their power. He believes they will attempt to buy you off by giving you, in exchange for real power, apparent power. Confrontation is then a way to apply pressure until you get real power."
The NEA's recommended reading excerpt states, "Alinsky was hated and defamed by powerful enemies, proof that his tactics worked. His simple formula for success ... 'Agitate + Aggravate + Educate + Organize.'"
Alinsky founded and trained community organizations to follow his methods, including organizations in South Chicago, where President Obama credits his political beginnings. As the Washington Post reported, Obama was hired shortly after graduating from college by a group of Alinsky's disciples to be community organizer on Chicago's South Side.
As WND reported, Obama approached Northwestern University professor John L. McKnight – a loyal student of Alinsky's radical tactics – to pen a letter of recommendation for him when he applied to Harvard Law School. Under the tutelage of McKnight and other hardcore students of Alinsky, Obama said he got the "best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School."
How deeply the radical leftist Alinsky actually influenced Obama has proven a point of controversy, as demonstrated by the stir caused after Michelle Obama's alleged use of Alinsky's words at the Democratic National Convention last year and by the war of words between the Obama campaign and authors like Jerome Corsi, who have pointed to Obama's connections with radical socialists and communists in his early years.
As WND reported, in a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe, Alinsky's son praised Obama for stirring up the masses at the Democratic National Convention "Saul Alinsky style," saying, "Obama learned his lesson well."
The letter signed L. David Alinsky closed by saying, "I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully."
Recommends texts by radical community organizer who 'encouraged positive social change'
by Chelsea Schilling
The National Education Association has made a glowing assessment of radical socialist community organizer Saul Alinsky and is enthusiastically recommending American public school teachers read two of his books, including one dedicated to Satan.
On its website, the NEA dubs Alinsky "an inspiration to anyone contemplating action in their community! And to every organizer!"
It recommends Alinsky's "Reveille for Radicals," a 1946 book about the principles and tactics of "community organizing," and "Rules for Radicals," a 1971 text that articulated a socialist strategy for gaining political power to redistribute wealth from the "haves" to the "have-nots."
The NEA, the largest labor union in the United States, represents public school teachers, college and university faculty, retired education employees and college students preparing to become teachers.
The association describes Alinsky as a "master political agitator, tactical planner and social organizer" who wrote a "guidebook for those who are out to change things."
"He sets down what the goal is: a society where people are free to live, and also aren't starving in the streets. A society where there is legal and economic justice," the NEA explains to educators. "Then he sets out to say how to get there."
The NEA continues, "Alinsky's goal seems to be to encourage positive social change by equipping activists with a realistic view of the world, a kind of preemptive disillusionment. If a person already knows what evil the world is capable of, then perhaps the surprise factor can be eliminated, making the person a more effective activist. Alinsky further seems to be encouraging the budding activist not to worry to [sic] much about getting his or her hands dirty. It's all a part of the job, he seems to say."
NEA promotes books by Saul Alinsky as recommended reading
As WND reported, Alinsky, the father of community organizing, dreamed of socialism one day replacing the "jungle" of American capitalism. He wrote that he hoped "for a future where the means of production will be owned by all of the people instead of just a comparative handful."
Alinsky dedicated the first edition of his book, "Rules for Radicals," to Satan: "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer."
Discover the Networks describes Alinsky as "an avatar of the post-modern Left" who studied criminology as a graduate student at the University of Chicago and became friends with Al Capone and his mobsters. He advocated a wholesale revolution so a supposedly oppressed population could acquire power and radically transform America's social and economic structure. He sought to foment public discontent to spark a social uprising.
"A reformation means that the masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don't know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless," Alinsky wrote in "Rules for Radicals." "They won't act for change but won't strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution."
In "Alinsky for Teacher Organizers," a 1972 document written for use in training teachers, NEA training consultant J. Michael Arisman explained that Alinsky believed the teacher association's real power base was in the community. He advocated organizing the community by using the natural interest in the children to send teachers into children's homes
so they could develop relationships with parents.
"He would assert that if the teacher association is successful in organizing the community for education ends, it would have no problem getting or maintaining its membership," Arisman wrote. "At the same time, the allies made by a multi-issue association will be valuable at contract time."
Action is critical, especially with the white middle class, Alinsky argued, because that group is not accustomed to action and will want to quit leadership training after the first time.
"Generally, the Alinsky advice on tactics is guerilla war advice," Arisman wrote. "To win, know the enemy, divide the enemy. Know who all the players are, conduct the action on several levels and personalize the conflict."
Arisman wrote that Alinsky's strategic and tactical essence was built around conflict.
"He uses confrontation much as teacher groups have used confrontation at the negotiations table in order to buy a piece of the power," he wrote. "Alinsky does not believe you can reason away from the power groups slices of their power. He believes they will attempt to buy you off by giving you, in exchange for real power, apparent power. Confrontation is then a way to apply pressure until you get real power."
The NEA's recommended reading excerpt states, "Alinsky was hated and defamed by powerful enemies, proof that his tactics worked. His simple formula for success ... 'Agitate + Aggravate + Educate + Organize.'"
Alinsky founded and trained community organizations to follow his methods, including organizations in South Chicago, where President Obama credits his political beginnings. As the Washington Post reported, Obama was hired shortly after graduating from college by a group of Alinsky's disciples to be community organizer on Chicago's South Side.
As WND reported, Obama approached Northwestern University professor John L. McKnight – a loyal student of Alinsky's radical tactics – to pen a letter of recommendation for him when he applied to Harvard Law School. Under the tutelage of McKnight and other hardcore students of Alinsky, Obama said he got the "best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School."
How deeply the radical leftist Alinsky actually influenced Obama has proven a point of controversy, as demonstrated by the stir caused after Michelle Obama's alleged use of Alinsky's words at the Democratic National Convention last year and by the war of words between the Obama campaign and authors like Jerome Corsi, who have pointed to Obama's connections with radical socialists and communists in his early years.
As WND reported, in a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe, Alinsky's son praised Obama for stirring up the masses at the Democratic National Convention "Saul Alinsky style," saying, "Obama learned his lesson well."
The letter signed L. David Alinsky closed by saying, "I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully."
Monday, November 2, 2009
No Authority For Copenhagen Treaty
Power Derives from Lawful Authority
The President of the United States has no more legal right to sign a treaty that turns legislative, executive, and judicial functions of our national government over to the United Nations than he has to declare the United States an Islamic Republic and its people henceforward subject to Sharia. Nevertheless, that would be the effect of the proposed United Nations Climate Change Treaty awaiting Mr. Obama's signature in Copenhagen this coming December.
The proposed treaty authorizes the establishment of a "government" to transfer wealth from industrial nations to non-industrial nations in payment of a "climate debt" which, the treaty declares, the industrial nations owe on account of burning carbon-based fuels. The newly created international government is to have the authority to decide issues relating to carbon emissions in signatory nations, the power to levy what amounts to carbon taxes on signatory nations, and the power to enforce its levies without reference to the will of the people who live in the signatory nations.
Thus, the proposed Climate Change Treaty demands that:
• An unelected international government is to be established without the American people voting on its establishment or membership;
• The unelected international government is to have authority to legislate how much and what kind of carbon-based activity Americans may engage in before they will be taxed on such activity;
• The unelected international government is to have authority to decide the amount of taxes Americans must pay for carbon-based activities, determine the people to whom the taxes will be given, and decide how those people will spend the taxes -- and none of those activities will be subject to presidential veto, congressional oversight, or review by the federal Judiciary, much less a vote by the American people;
• If the American people fail to abide by the legislative edicts of the unelected international government, they will be subject to international enforcement proceedings that are alien to our constitutional ideas of due process, equal protection, personal freedom, and property rights.
So, given what the treaty portends, the obvious question is, does it pass constitutional muster? Well, the answer to that question is two-pronged. First, there is the pragmatist's answer, which is that anything the Supreme Court says is constitutionally permissible is constitutionally permissible unless and until a later Supreme Court says otherwise. But then there is the answer that is rooted in American constitutional history, which is that no President, even with the advice and consent of the Senate, has the power to delegate legislative, executive, or judicial authority to any body in derogation of the manner in which such authority is granted by the United States Constitution.
The power of the President to enter into treaties on behalf of the United States is granted under Article II of the Constitution[1]. Under Article VI, the "Constitution, and the Laws of the United States ... and all Treaties made ... under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land ..." Thus, every lawful treaty signed by the President and consented to by the Senate becomes the equivalent of federal statutory law under our constitutional system of government[2].
Like federal laws, treaties are subject to judicial scrutiny. In assessing treaties, federal courts are required to determine whether and to what extent they are lawful. To use the language of Article VI, a treaty will be deemed lawful only if it is "made ... under the Authority of the United States." Any other kind of treaty is impermissible under our Constitution.
So, what does it mean to make a treaty "under the Authority of the United States?" Obviously, it means that the President must sign the treaty and a majority of a quorum of the Senate must consent to it. But a treaty made "under the Authority of the United States" necessarily means more than that. A presidential signature and senatorial ratification is merely the process by which a treaty takes on the outward garments of lawfulness. The substance of the treaty must also be lawful.
In the United States we have a tripartite system of government. Our Constitution vests executive power in the Presidency, legislative power in the Congress, and juridical power in the federal Judiciary. To be lawful under our Constitution, a treaty may not impinge on the constitutional grant of powers to the President, to Congress, or to the Judiciary. So with that in mind, I offer the following thoughts about the proposed Climate Change Treaty:
• An unelected international government may be established without the American people voting on its establishment and membership, but such a government cannot lawfully displace the constitutionally established government of the United States;
• An unelected international government may not legislate how much carbon-based domestic activity Americans can engage in before they will be taxed, because under the Constitution the power to legislate is granted exclusively to Congress;
• An unelected international government has no plenary authority to levy a tax on the American people for engaging in carbon-based domestic activities, because under the Constitution the power to tax the American people is granted exclusively to Congress;
• An unelected international government may not oust the federal judiciary from its jurisdiction over the American people's domestic energy activities, because under the Constitution the authority to enforce laws pertaining to such activities is granted exclusively to the Judiciary of the United States, which alone has the power and responsibility to uphold our federal constitutional rights and enforce laws that are national in scope.
Now, while the foregoing analysis doesn't purport to be a fully elaborated piece of legal research, it does find support in various Supreme Court cases. One of them is the 1935 decision in A.L.A. Schechters Poultry Corporation v. United States, in which the Supreme Court declared Franklin Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional. The court's opinion in that case is lengthy and its reasoning complex, but a couple of useful insights can be gleaned from its decision. The court wrote:
• "The ... powers of the national government are limited by the constitutional grants. Those who act under these grants are not at liberty to transcend the imposed limits because they believe that more or different power is necessary."
• "The Constitution provides that 'All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States' (and the) ... Congress is not permitted to abdicate or to transfer to others the essential legislative functions with which it is thus vested [3]."
Unfortunately, like most legal matters, these rules of constitutional interpretation seem self-evident, but when they are applied to the facts of a particular case, they begin to look about as clear as mud. Thus, in Schecters, the Supreme Court noted that federal courts do not deny Congress "the necessary resources of flexibility and practicality" to "enable it to perform its function in laying down policies and establishing standards." Congress, said the court, may leave to "selected instrumentalities the making of subordinate rules within prescribed limits and the determination of facts to which the policy as declared by the Legislature is to apply." However, "if our constitutional system is to be maintained," then Congress "cannot be allowed to obscure the limitations of the authority to delegate." In each instance, the court said, the judiciary will "look to the statute [here, the treaty] to see whether Congress has overstepped these limitations."
So, in the end, the question is whether the 200+ page Climate Change Treaty oversteps the constitutional limitations on the delegation of powers that are allocated to the various branches of our federal government. I believe that it does, but we can find out for certain only by a vote of five or more members of the United States Supreme Court. That's not much of a safety net for the preservation of America's constitutional democracy, but it wouldn't be the first time that the Supreme Court has operated as a check on the extra-constitutional exercise of power by a President of the United States.
In the meantime, don't forget to hold your Senators' feet to the fire on this issue. We don't need another national trauma, and we can avoid one by making sure our Senators withhold their consent to the proposed Climate Change Treaty, if and when Mr. Obama signs and submits it.
The President of the United States has no more legal right to sign a treaty that turns legislative, executive, and judicial functions of our national government over to the United Nations than he has to declare the United States an Islamic Republic and its people henceforward subject to Sharia. Nevertheless, that would be the effect of the proposed United Nations Climate Change Treaty awaiting Mr. Obama's signature in Copenhagen this coming December.
The proposed treaty authorizes the establishment of a "government" to transfer wealth from industrial nations to non-industrial nations in payment of a "climate debt" which, the treaty declares, the industrial nations owe on account of burning carbon-based fuels. The newly created international government is to have the authority to decide issues relating to carbon emissions in signatory nations, the power to levy what amounts to carbon taxes on signatory nations, and the power to enforce its levies without reference to the will of the people who live in the signatory nations.
Thus, the proposed Climate Change Treaty demands that:
• An unelected international government is to be established without the American people voting on its establishment or membership;
• The unelected international government is to have authority to legislate how much and what kind of carbon-based activity Americans may engage in before they will be taxed on such activity;
• The unelected international government is to have authority to decide the amount of taxes Americans must pay for carbon-based activities, determine the people to whom the taxes will be given, and decide how those people will spend the taxes -- and none of those activities will be subject to presidential veto, congressional oversight, or review by the federal Judiciary, much less a vote by the American people;
• If the American people fail to abide by the legislative edicts of the unelected international government, they will be subject to international enforcement proceedings that are alien to our constitutional ideas of due process, equal protection, personal freedom, and property rights.
So, given what the treaty portends, the obvious question is, does it pass constitutional muster? Well, the answer to that question is two-pronged. First, there is the pragmatist's answer, which is that anything the Supreme Court says is constitutionally permissible is constitutionally permissible unless and until a later Supreme Court says otherwise. But then there is the answer that is rooted in American constitutional history, which is that no President, even with the advice and consent of the Senate, has the power to delegate legislative, executive, or judicial authority to any body in derogation of the manner in which such authority is granted by the United States Constitution.
The power of the President to enter into treaties on behalf of the United States is granted under Article II of the Constitution[1]. Under Article VI, the "Constitution, and the Laws of the United States ... and all Treaties made ... under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land ..." Thus, every lawful treaty signed by the President and consented to by the Senate becomes the equivalent of federal statutory law under our constitutional system of government[2].
Like federal laws, treaties are subject to judicial scrutiny. In assessing treaties, federal courts are required to determine whether and to what extent they are lawful. To use the language of Article VI, a treaty will be deemed lawful only if it is "made ... under the Authority of the United States." Any other kind of treaty is impermissible under our Constitution.
So, what does it mean to make a treaty "under the Authority of the United States?" Obviously, it means that the President must sign the treaty and a majority of a quorum of the Senate must consent to it. But a treaty made "under the Authority of the United States" necessarily means more than that. A presidential signature and senatorial ratification is merely the process by which a treaty takes on the outward garments of lawfulness. The substance of the treaty must also be lawful.
In the United States we have a tripartite system of government. Our Constitution vests executive power in the Presidency, legislative power in the Congress, and juridical power in the federal Judiciary. To be lawful under our Constitution, a treaty may not impinge on the constitutional grant of powers to the President, to Congress, or to the Judiciary. So with that in mind, I offer the following thoughts about the proposed Climate Change Treaty:
• An unelected international government may be established without the American people voting on its establishment and membership, but such a government cannot lawfully displace the constitutionally established government of the United States;
• An unelected international government may not legislate how much carbon-based domestic activity Americans can engage in before they will be taxed, because under the Constitution the power to legislate is granted exclusively to Congress;
• An unelected international government has no plenary authority to levy a tax on the American people for engaging in carbon-based domestic activities, because under the Constitution the power to tax the American people is granted exclusively to Congress;
• An unelected international government may not oust the federal judiciary from its jurisdiction over the American people's domestic energy activities, because under the Constitution the authority to enforce laws pertaining to such activities is granted exclusively to the Judiciary of the United States, which alone has the power and responsibility to uphold our federal constitutional rights and enforce laws that are national in scope.
Now, while the foregoing analysis doesn't purport to be a fully elaborated piece of legal research, it does find support in various Supreme Court cases. One of them is the 1935 decision in A.L.A. Schechters Poultry Corporation v. United States, in which the Supreme Court declared Franklin Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional. The court's opinion in that case is lengthy and its reasoning complex, but a couple of useful insights can be gleaned from its decision. The court wrote:
• "The ... powers of the national government are limited by the constitutional grants. Those who act under these grants are not at liberty to transcend the imposed limits because they believe that more or different power is necessary."
• "The Constitution provides that 'All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States' (and the) ... Congress is not permitted to abdicate or to transfer to others the essential legislative functions with which it is thus vested [3]."
Unfortunately, like most legal matters, these rules of constitutional interpretation seem self-evident, but when they are applied to the facts of a particular case, they begin to look about as clear as mud. Thus, in Schecters, the Supreme Court noted that federal courts do not deny Congress "the necessary resources of flexibility and practicality" to "enable it to perform its function in laying down policies and establishing standards." Congress, said the court, may leave to "selected instrumentalities the making of subordinate rules within prescribed limits and the determination of facts to which the policy as declared by the Legislature is to apply." However, "if our constitutional system is to be maintained," then Congress "cannot be allowed to obscure the limitations of the authority to delegate." In each instance, the court said, the judiciary will "look to the statute [here, the treaty] to see whether Congress has overstepped these limitations."
So, in the end, the question is whether the 200+ page Climate Change Treaty oversteps the constitutional limitations on the delegation of powers that are allocated to the various branches of our federal government. I believe that it does, but we can find out for certain only by a vote of five or more members of the United States Supreme Court. That's not much of a safety net for the preservation of America's constitutional democracy, but it wouldn't be the first time that the Supreme Court has operated as a check on the extra-constitutional exercise of power by a President of the United States.
In the meantime, don't forget to hold your Senators' feet to the fire on this issue. We don't need another national trauma, and we can avoid one by making sure our Senators withhold their consent to the proposed Climate Change Treaty, if and when Mr. Obama signs and submits it.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Obama's Attack On Free Speech
Troubling Signals On Free Speech
In his eagerness to please international opinion, President Obama has taken a small but significant step toward censoring free speech.
by Stuart Taylor Jr.
It was nice to hear Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton say on October 26, "I strongly disagree" with Islamic countries seeking to censor free speech worldwide by making defamation of religion a crime under international law.
But watch what the Obama administration does, not just what it says. I'm not talking about its attacks on Fox News. I'm talking about a little-publicized October 2 resolution in which Clinton's own State Department joined Islamic nations in adopting language all-too-friendly to censoring speech that some religions and races find offensive.
The ambiguously worded United Nations Human Rights Council resolution could plausibly be read as encouraging or even obliging the U.S. to make it a crime to engage in hate speech, or, perhaps, in mere "negative racial and religious stereotyping." This despite decades of First Amendment case law protecting such speech.
To be sure, the provisions to which I refer were a compromise, stopping short of the flat ban on defamation of religion sought by Islamic nations, and they could also be construed more narrowly and innocuously. It all depends on who does the construing.
Is it "negative stereotyping" to say that the world's most dangerous terrorists are Islamists, for example? Many would say yes.
I sketch below how the resolution could be construed to require prosecuting some offensive speech and how it could be used in the long run to change the meaning of our Constitution and laws, based on doctrines developed by legal academics including Obama appointee Harold Koh, the State Department's top lawyer.
Also troublesome on the free-speech front are various remarks by Mark Lloyd, the Federal Communications Commission's associate general counsel and chief diversity officer. Lloyd asserted in a 2006 book, "The purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance." He co-authored a 2007 report calling for regulatory changes to close "the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio." In 2008, he praised the "incredible ... democratic revolution" of Hugo Chavez and implied approval of the thuggish Venezuelan strongman's pattern of shutting down news media opposed to him.
That's how I read Lloyd's videotaped statement, first aired by Glenn Beck of Fox News, in which he said: "The property owners and the folks who then were controlling the media rebelled [against Chavez], worked, frankly, with folks here in the U.S. government, worked to oust him. But he came back with another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country."
Then there was the June 5 high school commencement speech in which White House Communications Director Anita Dunn called Mao Zedong -- one of history's greatest mass murderers and an implacable enemy of free speech -- one of "my favorite political philosophers." Dunn has, coincidentally, been the point person in President Obama's attacks on Fox News.
The administration is seeded with left-liberal thinkers who have smiled on efforts to punish speech that is offensive to favored racial and religious groups.
This is not to suggest that Dunn approves of mass murder or that Obama wants to censor critics. But the ideologies of appointees such as Lloyd and Dunn can have consequences. And in his eagerness to please international opinion, Obama has now taken a small but significant step toward making bad law.
Law -- especially international law -- evolves below the radar, in small moves largely ignored by the mainstream media. Although international resolutions have traditionally not been seen as binding law, the Obama administration is seeded with left-liberal thinkers who have long sought to spin what some call "transnational" law out of such stuff, and who have smiled on efforts to punish speech that is offensive to favored racial, religious, and other groups.
Such attitudes may help explain the administration's decision to join the U.N. Human Rights Council in the first place. Obama reversed a Bush administration policy of shunning this deeply politicized body, which counts as members several flagrant human-rights abusers and which is preoccupied with attacking Israel.
The council's October 2 resolution is ostensibly an endorsement of "freedom of opinion and expression," which seems ironic, given the track records of such members as China, Cuba, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
But the real problem is a provision, which the U.S. championed jointly with Egypt, exuding hostility to free expression.
That provision "expresses its concern that incidents of racial and religious intolerance, discrimination and related violence, as well as of negative racial and religious stereotyping continue to rise around the world, and condemns, in this context, any advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence, and urges States to take effective measures, consistent with their obligations under international human-rights law, to address and combat such incidents" (emphasis added).
What is this clot of verbiage supposed to mean?
It could be read narrowly as a commitment merely to denounce and eschew hate speech. But it could more logically be read broadly as requiring the United States and other nations to punish "hostile" speech about -- and perhaps also "negative stereotyping" of -- any race or religion. It's a safe bet, however, that the Islamic nations that are so concerned about criticisms of their religion will not be prosecuting anyone for the rampant "negative racial and ethnic stereotyping" and hate speech in their own countries directed at Jews and sometimes Christians.
Eugene Volokh of the University of California (Los Angeles) Law School pointed out on his Volokh Conspiracy blog that the reference to "obligations under international human-rights law" could be seen as binding the United States to a provision of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requiring that hate speech "shall be prohibited by law." The U.S. has previously rejected that provision.
Added Volokh: "Advocacy of mere hostility -- for instance... to radical strains of Islam [or any other religion] -- is clearly constitutionally protected here in the U.S.; but the resolution seems to call for its prohibition. [And] if we are constitutionally barred from adhering to it by our domestic Constitution, then [the administration's vote was] implicitly criticizing that Constitution, and committing ourselves to do what we can to change it." Such a stance could be seen as obliging the executive branch to urge the Supreme Court to overrule decades of First Amendment decisions.
Obama should not take even a small step down the road toward bartering away free speech for the sake of international consensus.
Far-fetched? Not according to the hopes and expectations of many international law scholars. "An international norm against hate speech would supply a basis for prohibiting it, the First Amendment notwithstanding.... In the long run, it may point to the Constitution's more complete subordination," Peter Spiro, a professor at Temple University Law School, asserted in a 2003 Stanford Law Review article.
Similarly, if more ambiguously, Koh wrote in another 2003 Stanford Law Review article, "Our exceptional free-speech tradition can cause problems abroad, as, for example, may occur when hate speech is disseminated over the Internet." The Supreme Court, suggested Koh -- then a professor at Yale Law School -- "can moderate these conflicts by applying more consistently the transnationalist approach to judicial interpretation" that he espouses.
Translation: Transnational law may sometimes trump the established interpretation of the First Amendment. This is the clear meaning of Koh's writings, although he implied otherwise during his Senate confirmation hearing.
In my view, Obama should not take even a small step down the road toward bartering away our free-speech rights for the sake of international consensus. "Criticism of religion is the very measure of the guarantee of free speech," as Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, wrote in an October 19 USA Today op-ed.
Even European nations with much weaker free-speech traditions than ours were reportedly dismayed by the American cave-in to Islamic nations on "racial and religious stereotyping" and the rest.
The pressure to censor harsh criticisms of Islam, as well as other religions and groups, began to intensify after bloody riots by Muslims around the world in 2006 over the publication in Denmark of cartoons ridiculing Muhammad.
People have reportedly been prosecuted in Austria, Finland, and India for asserting that Muhammad's marriage to a 9-year-old girl made him a "pedophile." Brigitte Bardot was convicted in 2008 of provoking racial hatred for saying in a letter to France's interior minister that Muslims were ruining France. A 15-year-old boy in Britain was charged under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act last year for holding up a sign outside a Scientology building calling the practice "a dangerous cult." And so on.
We have had no such overt federal government censorship in this country so far. But we have seen plenty of private censorship and self-censorship, especially at our universities, most of which have thinly disguised speech codes.
One example is the spineless decision in August by Yale President Richard Levin and the Yale University Press to remove the Danish cartoons (and all other pictures) of Muhammad from a book about the drawings.
The reaction of the academic world to such episodes has been apathy. The same is true of the response by the academic world, the news media, and civil-liberties groups to the October 2 resolution.
Take The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union. Both were once dependable guardians of uninhibited, robust, and wide-open debate, regardless of whose ox was gored. But as best I can tell from their websites, neither has said a word about the Obama administration's collaboration with would-be censors sitting on the U.N. Human Rights Council.
In his eagerness to please international opinion, President Obama has taken a small but significant step toward censoring free speech.
by Stuart Taylor Jr.
It was nice to hear Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton say on October 26, "I strongly disagree" with Islamic countries seeking to censor free speech worldwide by making defamation of religion a crime under international law.
But watch what the Obama administration does, not just what it says. I'm not talking about its attacks on Fox News. I'm talking about a little-publicized October 2 resolution in which Clinton's own State Department joined Islamic nations in adopting language all-too-friendly to censoring speech that some religions and races find offensive.
The ambiguously worded United Nations Human Rights Council resolution could plausibly be read as encouraging or even obliging the U.S. to make it a crime to engage in hate speech, or, perhaps, in mere "negative racial and religious stereotyping." This despite decades of First Amendment case law protecting such speech.
To be sure, the provisions to which I refer were a compromise, stopping short of the flat ban on defamation of religion sought by Islamic nations, and they could also be construed more narrowly and innocuously. It all depends on who does the construing.
Is it "negative stereotyping" to say that the world's most dangerous terrorists are Islamists, for example? Many would say yes.
I sketch below how the resolution could be construed to require prosecuting some offensive speech and how it could be used in the long run to change the meaning of our Constitution and laws, based on doctrines developed by legal academics including Obama appointee Harold Koh, the State Department's top lawyer.
Also troublesome on the free-speech front are various remarks by Mark Lloyd, the Federal Communications Commission's associate general counsel and chief diversity officer. Lloyd asserted in a 2006 book, "The purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance." He co-authored a 2007 report calling for regulatory changes to close "the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio." In 2008, he praised the "incredible ... democratic revolution" of Hugo Chavez and implied approval of the thuggish Venezuelan strongman's pattern of shutting down news media opposed to him.
That's how I read Lloyd's videotaped statement, first aired by Glenn Beck of Fox News, in which he said: "The property owners and the folks who then were controlling the media rebelled [against Chavez], worked, frankly, with folks here in the U.S. government, worked to oust him. But he came back with another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country."
Then there was the June 5 high school commencement speech in which White House Communications Director Anita Dunn called Mao Zedong -- one of history's greatest mass murderers and an implacable enemy of free speech -- one of "my favorite political philosophers." Dunn has, coincidentally, been the point person in President Obama's attacks on Fox News.
The administration is seeded with left-liberal thinkers who have smiled on efforts to punish speech that is offensive to favored racial and religious groups.
This is not to suggest that Dunn approves of mass murder or that Obama wants to censor critics. But the ideologies of appointees such as Lloyd and Dunn can have consequences. And in his eagerness to please international opinion, Obama has now taken a small but significant step toward making bad law.
Law -- especially international law -- evolves below the radar, in small moves largely ignored by the mainstream media. Although international resolutions have traditionally not been seen as binding law, the Obama administration is seeded with left-liberal thinkers who have long sought to spin what some call "transnational" law out of such stuff, and who have smiled on efforts to punish speech that is offensive to favored racial, religious, and other groups.
Such attitudes may help explain the administration's decision to join the U.N. Human Rights Council in the first place. Obama reversed a Bush administration policy of shunning this deeply politicized body, which counts as members several flagrant human-rights abusers and which is preoccupied with attacking Israel.
The council's October 2 resolution is ostensibly an endorsement of "freedom of opinion and expression," which seems ironic, given the track records of such members as China, Cuba, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
But the real problem is a provision, which the U.S. championed jointly with Egypt, exuding hostility to free expression.
That provision "expresses its concern that incidents of racial and religious intolerance, discrimination and related violence, as well as of negative racial and religious stereotyping continue to rise around the world, and condemns, in this context, any advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence, and urges States to take effective measures, consistent with their obligations under international human-rights law, to address and combat such incidents" (emphasis added).
What is this clot of verbiage supposed to mean?
It could be read narrowly as a commitment merely to denounce and eschew hate speech. But it could more logically be read broadly as requiring the United States and other nations to punish "hostile" speech about -- and perhaps also "negative stereotyping" of -- any race or religion. It's a safe bet, however, that the Islamic nations that are so concerned about criticisms of their religion will not be prosecuting anyone for the rampant "negative racial and ethnic stereotyping" and hate speech in their own countries directed at Jews and sometimes Christians.
Eugene Volokh of the University of California (Los Angeles) Law School pointed out on his Volokh Conspiracy blog that the reference to "obligations under international human-rights law" could be seen as binding the United States to a provision of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requiring that hate speech "shall be prohibited by law." The U.S. has previously rejected that provision.
Added Volokh: "Advocacy of mere hostility -- for instance... to radical strains of Islam [or any other religion] -- is clearly constitutionally protected here in the U.S.; but the resolution seems to call for its prohibition. [And] if we are constitutionally barred from adhering to it by our domestic Constitution, then [the administration's vote was] implicitly criticizing that Constitution, and committing ourselves to do what we can to change it." Such a stance could be seen as obliging the executive branch to urge the Supreme Court to overrule decades of First Amendment decisions.
Obama should not take even a small step down the road toward bartering away free speech for the sake of international consensus.
Far-fetched? Not according to the hopes and expectations of many international law scholars. "An international norm against hate speech would supply a basis for prohibiting it, the First Amendment notwithstanding.... In the long run, it may point to the Constitution's more complete subordination," Peter Spiro, a professor at Temple University Law School, asserted in a 2003 Stanford Law Review article.
Similarly, if more ambiguously, Koh wrote in another 2003 Stanford Law Review article, "Our exceptional free-speech tradition can cause problems abroad, as, for example, may occur when hate speech is disseminated over the Internet." The Supreme Court, suggested Koh -- then a professor at Yale Law School -- "can moderate these conflicts by applying more consistently the transnationalist approach to judicial interpretation" that he espouses.
Translation: Transnational law may sometimes trump the established interpretation of the First Amendment. This is the clear meaning of Koh's writings, although he implied otherwise during his Senate confirmation hearing.
In my view, Obama should not take even a small step down the road toward bartering away our free-speech rights for the sake of international consensus. "Criticism of religion is the very measure of the guarantee of free speech," as Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, wrote in an October 19 USA Today op-ed.
Even European nations with much weaker free-speech traditions than ours were reportedly dismayed by the American cave-in to Islamic nations on "racial and religious stereotyping" and the rest.
The pressure to censor harsh criticisms of Islam, as well as other religions and groups, began to intensify after bloody riots by Muslims around the world in 2006 over the publication in Denmark of cartoons ridiculing Muhammad.
People have reportedly been prosecuted in Austria, Finland, and India for asserting that Muhammad's marriage to a 9-year-old girl made him a "pedophile." Brigitte Bardot was convicted in 2008 of provoking racial hatred for saying in a letter to France's interior minister that Muslims were ruining France. A 15-year-old boy in Britain was charged under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act last year for holding up a sign outside a Scientology building calling the practice "a dangerous cult." And so on.
We have had no such overt federal government censorship in this country so far. But we have seen plenty of private censorship and self-censorship, especially at our universities, most of which have thinly disguised speech codes.
One example is the spineless decision in August by Yale President Richard Levin and the Yale University Press to remove the Danish cartoons (and all other pictures) of Muhammad from a book about the drawings.
The reaction of the academic world to such episodes has been apathy. The same is true of the response by the academic world, the news media, and civil-liberties groups to the October 2 resolution.
Take The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union. Both were once dependable guardians of uninhibited, robust, and wide-open debate, regardless of whose ox was gored. But as best I can tell from their websites, neither has said a word about the Obama administration's collaboration with would-be censors sitting on the U.N. Human Rights Council.
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