Damned Spots & Global Warming

Environmentalism & Animal Rights

My WND colleague Doug Powers comments on his blog about the documentary the Great Global Warming Swindle. The Great Global Warming Swindle page on Channel 4 is here.

I’ve been communicating with the author of “Global Warming: CO2, SunSpots or Politics?” Phil N. Baldwin, Jr. is an applied mathematician and chemist. The book

Discusses and analyzes the impact of greenhouse gases and sunspots on weather dating back to 1750. A newly devised Sun Cycle Power Index (SCPI), discovered by The LrnIT Institute, is described with demonstration on how the SCPI has a powerful and controlling impact on grand global weather patterns. This digital book is full of data yet is simple to understand and makes straightword points. This is a reference book, with many weather data sources referenced as well as substantial data included. This book is also entertaining and fascinating to read.

Some of the boffins I know ran the numbers and were impressed with this work. Phil has promised to pen an op-ed for BAB.

A Triumph for Individual Rights

Individual Rights, Rights

From Breitbart.com:

“A federal appeals court overturned the District of Columbia’s long- standing handgun ban Friday, rejecting the city’s argument that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applied only to militias.”

Here’s an excerpt from the decision, courtesy of Volokh Conspiracy:

“In determining whether the Second Amendment’s guarantee is an individual one, or some sort of collective right, the most important word is the one the drafters chose to describe the holders of the right — ‘the people.’ That term is found in the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments. It has never been doubted that these provisions were designed to protect the interests of individuals against government intrusion, interference, or usurpation. We also note that the Tenth Amendment — ‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people’ — indicates that the authors of the Bill of Rights were perfectly capable of distinguishing between ‘the people,’ on the one hand, and ‘the states,’ on the other. The natural reading of ‘the right of the people’ in the Second Amendment would accord with usage elsewhere in the Bill of Rights.
The District’s argument, on the other hand, asks us to read ‘the people’ to mean some subset of individuals such as ‘the organized militia’ or ‘the people who are engaged in militia service,’ or perhaps not any individuals at all — e.g., ‘the states.’ These strained interpretations of ‘the people’ simply cannot be squared with the uniform construction of our other Bill of Rights provisions….
The District points to the singular nature of the Second Amendment’s preamble as an indication that the operative clause must be restricted or conditioned in some way by the prefatory language. However, the structure of the Second Amendment turns out to be not so unusual when we examine state constitutional provisions guaranteeing rights or restricting governmental power. It was quite common for prefatory language to state a principle of good government that was narrower than the operative language used to achieve it.
We think the Second Amendment was similarly structured. The prefatory language announcing the desirability of a well-regulated militia — even bearing in mind the breadth of the concept of a militia [which the court had earlier concluded ‘was a large segment of the population’ rather than just a government-selected National Guard-like subgroup -EV] — is narrower than the guarantee of an individual right to keep and bear arms. The Amendment does not protect ‘the right of militiamen to keep and bear arms,’ but rather ‘the right of the people.’ The operative clause, properly read, protects the ownership and use of weaponry beyond that needed to preserve the state militias….
[I]f the competent drafters of the Second Amendment had meant the right to be limited to the protection of state militias, it is hard to imagine that they would have chosen the language they did. We therefore take it as an expression of the drafters’ view that the people possessed a natural right to keep and bear arms, and that the preservation of the militia was the right’s most salient political benefit —” and thus the most appropriate to express in a political document.”

Updated: WND and Me

Ilana Mercer, Media

“…Before long, a rather unconventional man by the name of Joseph Farah called me. WND.com’s CEO was funny and frank. I had lived among the Nordic, morose Canadians for seven lean years. So this lively American, who cocked a snook at the media establishment, was a breath of fresh air. Mr. Farah told me that launching the odd blowhard with limited cerebral agility was lucrative, but that WND also intended to nurture real talent. ‘This is where you come in,’ he said, and forthwith made me a featured columnist for WND.com.”
“Consider this: I have been fired from a libertarian website for deviating from dictated dogma. Yet in all my years with WND.com, the Internet’s leading, largest independent website, I have never so much as been censored —not even when I liken Bush’s ‘Bring ’em on grin‘ to the grimace ‘on the face of a demented patient with end-stage syphilis.'”

WorldNetDaily.com columnists were asked if they’d write something in honor of the site’s 10th Anniversary. “WND and Me” is my tribute.

Update: A reader wrote the following, with respect to a particular line from the column:

“‘Mr. Farah told me that launching the odd blowhard with limited cerebral agility was lucrative…’ And who is that bitchy swipe supposed to refer to?”

My reply: It was not a bitchy swipe, but a rendering of a conversation that occurred. It’s the history of an exchange between myself and Mr. Farah. Naturally, I will not divulge more than that.

Scooter/Stewart Similarities

Criminal Injustice, Law, Politics, Republicans

Denis Collins, juror in Scooter Libby’s trial, said that Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff was the fall guy. “‘What are we doing with this guy here? Where’s Rove? Where are these other guys?'” is how Collins described the pickle jurors found themselves in during Libby’s scuttlebutt-driven trial. Still, it did not prevent them from convicting Libby, and rendering conflicting verdicts, to boot.

Not that he was a sympathetic sort, but CIA director George ‘Slam-Dunk’ Tenet was also the fall guy for Cheney, Bush, Rove, and Rice. They’re good at letting the minions take the wrap for their infractions.

More crucially, the “crime” for which Libby was convicted was also the crime for which Martha Stewart went to jail: lying to the FBI. Not for leaking the identity of former (so-called) classified CIA operative Valerie Plame. (Or, in Stewart’s case, insider trading.) Richard Armitage did that.

Where a prosecutor could never hope to prove his case in a court of law, he goes looking for other charges. He manufactures crimes. If he can’t get a defendant —usually a high-profile one —on the facts; the prosecutor will often get him for lying. After all, if the prosecutor has not been able to prove his case, this must mean the hapless accused has been lying, right?

Republicans failed to protest Stewart’s sham of a trial, but have been perfectly capable of articulating why Scooter Libby’s conviction is suspect. But that’s to be expected. Stewart is a rock-ribbed Democrat; Scooter a Republican. Democrats are as partisan.

Let’s hope Cheney cashes in some Halliburton shares to help defray the costs of Libby’s $6-million defense.