New Science Standards Forcing State Schools to Teach Human-induced Climate Change

West Virginia Votes To Block Science Standards Because They Teach Global Warming

Feb 29, 2016 

Think Progress - Beginning this summer, public school students in West Virginia were supposed to learn about human-induced climate change three times — in sixth-grade science, in ninth-grade science, and in a high school elective course on environmental science. Now, it’s unclear whether students will learn about climate change at all.

That’s because the West Virginia House of Delegates voted last Friday to block new science standards from being implemented for at least another year, due to the fact that they mention climate change as a man-made problem. Proponents of the delay, which was introduced as an amendment to a larger education bill, argued that the new curriculum would have presented the science of climate change without properly reflecting both sides of the global warming debate.

“In an energy-producing state, it’s a concern to me that we are teaching our kids potentially that we are doing immoral things here in order to make a living in our state,” Delegate Jim Butler, (R) told the Charleston Gazette-Mail. “We need to make sure our science standards are actually teaching science and not pushing a political agenda.” Butler also worried that the new curriculum would “expect students to believe” in global warming and “prove it with evidence.”

Also speaking to the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Delegate Michel Moffatt (R), who introduced the amendment, worried that students would “twist” the climate science curriculum to conclude that “all fossil fuels are bad.” And Delegate Frank Deem (R) speaking in support of the amendment, said that “there’s nothing that upsets [him] more than the idea that it’s a proven fact that climate change is man made.”

Adopted in 2015, the new science curriculum, which was based on the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), has long been a divisive issue for the second-largest coal producing state in the country. In early 2015, the West Virginia Board of Education approved new education standards based on the NGSS, but included changes to the cirriculum that gave added weight to the idea that there is a debate surrounding climate science. That move produced a swift outcry from proponents of science and climate education, and led the West Virginia Board of Education to reverse its changes and return to the original NGSS version.

Those standards were officially adopted by the board in April, but included a few changes meant to appease climate change doubters, like mentioning “natural forces” in a list of things that could be driving climate change. The standards were supposed to go into effect beginning July 1.

Proponents of the NGSS argue that climate change, when taught, is often left out of general curricula, relegated instead to specific classes that aren’t required of all students. And around the United States, the way that climate change is taught in schools varies widely. A recent survey published in Science found that while three out of four teachers spend at least an hour on climate change instruction, two-thirds of instructors fail to teach the clear connection between human activities and climate change.

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE), which promotes the teaching of both climate science and evolution in school curricula, denounced Friday’s vote.

“West Virginia’s children, like children everywhere, need to learn about the science of climate change,” NCSE’s executive director Ann Reid said in a statement, “since it is they who will have to live in a world that we have been warming. For their sake, West Virginia’s Senate needs to reject the proposed repeal of the state science standards.”

The bill now goes to the Republican-led West Virginia Senate. Republican Senator Dave Sypolt, who is chair of the Senate Education Committee, told ABC News that he has no problem with the bill as it is currently written.

“As it stands right now, I have no problems with it at all,” Sypolt said. “I’m going to work it and send it right through.”

Obama's "Clean Power Plan" is Closing Down Coal-fired Power Plants, Which Will Cause Electricity Rates to "Necessarily Skyrocket"

On the Clean Power Plan, former Obama Administration Assistant Secretary Charles McConnell said at best it will reduce global temperature by only one one-hundredth of a degree Celsius.

From a review recently completed by the CO2 Coalition (CO2Coalition.org), a new independent, nonpartisan scientific-educational group... (nonpartisans means no one involved has or shows an agenda):

"Carbon dioxide, CO2, is not a pollutant. All living things are built of carbon that comes from CO2. An increase in essential CO2 in the atmosphere will be a huge benefit to plants and agriculture. Satellite measurements show that the increase of CO2 over the last few decades has already caused a pronounced greening of the planet — especially in arid regions."

"We support the cost-effective control of real pollutants associated with the use of fossil fuels — for example, fly ash, oxides of nitrogen and sulfur or smog-forming volatile hydrocarbons. But CO2 isn’t a pollutant, and there’s no reason to control it."

"Warming” from CO2 has been much less than predicted by the climate models the Administration bases his policies on. For 20 years, the temperature has been virtually unchanged, in stark contrast to model predictions."

City officials working to keep DTE Energy Trenton Channel Power Plant open

February 24, 2016

The News-Herald - Despite DTE Energy’s announcement in September of plans to close 25 power plants in Michigan by 2020, Trenton officials remain hopeful the Trenton Channel Power Plant will remain open if it is selected for conversion from coal fueled to natural gas.

Under the administration of President Barack Obama, the Clean Power Plan -- a policy aimed at combating pollutants causing climate change -- was proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in June 2014.

Under terms of the plan, Michigan must reduce its carbon emission rate by 39 percent by 2030. With the expected plant closures, Michigan would be at a 17 percent reduction by 2020.

The transition to natural gas plants is expected to cut carbon dioxide in the air by 50 percent to 60 percent over using coal, according to the plan.

Dating to 2014, the announcement of two of three units slated to close at the Trenton facility left residents wondering about the plant’s future.

At the time, DTE Energy spokeswoman Randi Berris said Unit 9, the largest generating unit at the Trenton Channel, was expected to be the only section open. She said it would continue to provide “reliable, affordable” power for DTE Energy customers.

Despite the Trenton Channel being on the list of plants expected to close between 2020 and 2022, City Administrator Jim Wagner said he is “optimistic that something will be done and DTE Energy’s Trenton Channel Plant will be saved.”

Wagner, council members and other city staff plan to meet with DTE Energy representatives to seek options to keep the facility open.

Closing the plant would impact city services by about 25 percent as it is the municipality’s largest current taxpayer, Wagner said.

Not only would plant workers lose their jobs, but a reduction in firefighters, police officers and sanitary engineers also would have to be made, he said.

“If the Trenton Channel Plant closes, it will leave a much greater impact farther than the city of Trenton,” Wagner said. “… Coal producers will see layoffs in their business from the production standpoint. Rail company profits will reduce because there will be less coal being transported.

“There are many ramifications from closing the plants. … We can only assume that with the reduction of these DTE Energy plants, electricity rates will also go up.”

Oil Barons Plan to Freeze Production So That Oil Price Increases to $50 Per Barrel

Oil freeze deal will be done by March: Russia

February 21, 2016

CNBC - Consultations on a preliminary deal between leading oil producers to freeze output should be concluded by March 1 after a group led by Russia and Saudi Arabia reached a common position this week in Doha, Russia's energy minister said.

In a television interview aired on Saturday, Alexander Novak also said that the agreement announced on Feb. 16 was weighty enough.

"Those countries which have openly supported this approach are producing around 75 percent out of global (oil) export volumes. My point is that, in practice, this is enough to agree," Novak told the "Vesti on Saturday" program.

Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Venezuela said this week after talks in Doha that they were ready to freeze production at January levels if other producers do the same.

Iran welcomed the deal. But it stopped short of saying it would itself freeze production at January levels and its deputy oil minister said on Saturday it would increase production soon.

Novak said talks between Venezuela and Iran were still ongoing, and said consultations would also be held with non-OPEC countries, including Mexico and Norway.

"I believe that they (Mexico and Norway) would take a constructive stance," he said.

Oil prices have crashed more than 70 percent in the past 20 months, driven by near-record production by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other producers, adding to one of the worst supply gluts in history.

Crisis-hit Venezuela has been pushing for an oil deal to offset a brutal recession that cost the leading Socialist Party its legislative majority in a December election.

If additional oil were not supplied to the market, then the global surplus of oil would fall by at least 1.3 million barrels per day, Novak added.

Palestinians Have “Snapped” from the Pressure of Living Stunted Lives Under Occupation and Israeli Military Rule

Martyrs? Desperate? Crazy? Palestinians struggle to define Palestinians who attack Israelis

February 21, 2016

The Washington Post - Since the beginning of October, Palestinians have killed 28 Israelis and four others, including an American. More than 160 Palestinians have been killed — 111 during attacks and 50 in clashes with Israeli forces.

The Israelis are clear. They call it “terrorism.” Yet after five months of near-daily violence against Israelis, Palestinian society struggles with how to describe the wave of knife, gun and vehicular attacks targeting Israeli soldiers and civilians.

Is it an “uprising” or “upheaval” or “awakening” — or personal “despair”? Are the assailants “martyrs” or “victims” or both? Are the teens wielding kitchen knives “heroes” or “children” — and after they are shot and killed by Israeli soldiers during the attacks, should they be celebrated as “warriors” for the Palestinian cause or pitied as unstable individuals who “snapped”?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently offered his own explanation: The Palestinians are stabbing Israelis because they celebrate a “culture of death.” The Palestinians blame the almost 50-year military occupation of their home, which they condemn as 21st-century apartheid.

Some Palestinian officials have told Western diplomats and journalists that they believe at least some of the attackers have “snapped” from the pressure of living stunted lives under occupation. There was some psychological trauma that induced them to rush toward Israeli soldiers with a knife in their hands to commit a Palestinian version of “suicide by cop,” they say.

Mustafa Barghouti, the secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative, said: “The stabbings are unorganized. They come from frustration.”

Some Palestinian activists have labeled the violence the beginning of a third “intifada,” a mass uprising. The first intifada, in the 1980s, was characterized by youths throwing stones; the second by suicide bombers in the 2000s. Eventually both were directed by militant factions and adopted by the leadership.

Many dismiss the word “intifada” to describe the current violence, calling it overblown and saying there is little evidence of mass rebellion. They point to the relatively low numbers of demonstrators on the streets.

The Judicial Branch Struck Back Against Obama's Overreach, But Because Justice Scalia's Death Invalidates His Opinions in Pending Cases, Everything is Now Tipped in Obama's Favor

Justice Scalia heard and potentially already cast votes in several high-profile cases. Scalia’s votes in those cases will be invalidated, sending the justices back to the drawing board to renegotiate those decisions. His death will likely also lead to 4-4 splits on some key issues, with the remaining four liberals and four conservatives facing off against each other. When the court splits down the middle on a case, it does not create a binding legal precedent for the country. Whatever the lower court decided is affirmed, and that ruling only applies to their circuit — leaving legal conflicts among circuits unresolved. Or the court can put the case over for re-argument, essentially telling both parties to try again when the court is back to a full bench.


Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia poses with his family in his chambers before court ceremonies on Sept. 26, 1986, in Washington. Pictured are, front row, from left: Margaret Jane; Justice Scalia, Christopher and Mary. In the back are, from left: Maureen Scalia, Ann Forrest, Catherine, Matthew, Eugene, John and Paul. (Bob Daugherty/Associated Press)

Justice Antonin Scalia’s son spoke of his father's influence on his family at his funeral Feb. 20. Rev. Paul Scalia said "God blessed dad with a love for his family." Click here for video. 

The legislative and judicial branches strike back against Obama’s overreach

“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” - Newton’s Third Law of Motion 

By George F. Will, Opinion Writer at The Washington Post

February 19, 2016

  

Notice the Newtonian physics of America’s Madisonian system. Barack Obama’s Wilsonian hostility to the separation of powers, expressed in his executive authoritarianism, is provoking equal and opposite reactions from the judicial and legislative branches.

The Supreme Court has inflicted on Obama a defeat accurately described as the court’s most severe rebuke of a president since it rejected Harry Truman’s claim that inherent presidential powers legitimated his seizure of the steel industry during the Korean War. The court has blocked Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which rests on the rickety premise that the Clean Air Act somehow, in a way unsuspected for four decades, empowers the Environmental Protection Agency to annihilate the right of states to regulate power generation.

It is unprecedented for the Supreme Court to stop a regulatory regime before a lower court has ruled on its merits. This is condign punishment for the EPA’s arrogance last year after the court held that it had no authority for a rule regulating fossil fuel-fired power plants in Michigan. The EPA snidely responded with a gloating statement that the court’s decision came too late to prevent it from imposing almost $10 billion in costs under the illegal rule.

The legislative branch, too, is retaliating against executive overreach. Consider the lethal letter Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) sent to the Education Department concerning its Office for Civil Rights.

Carbon Taxes Will Help Fund World Government: Emission-cut Pledges to Cost $1 Trillion a Year

"Carbon taxes can raise substantial amounts of government revenue, are a highly practical extension of existing administration for fuel taxes, and can be in countries’ own national interests due to domestic health and other co-benefits. Emissions prices can be aligned with mitigation pledges. Cap-and-trade systems are another option, but generally they should be designed to look like taxes through revenue-raising and price stability provisions." - International Monetary Fund

CO2 is a normal part of the carbon cycle and is essential to all life on earth.

It's not global warning, it's climate change stupid! The fact DC has more snow than last year is proof of climate change! I bet next year will be less snow and there you have it -- climate change again.  Climate change is real, and it's time to turn over our economy and our freedom to elites and "authorities" to manage our lives from birth to death. Once we accept this we can all hold hands and sing "we are the world". On a serious note, climate change is perfect for the ruling class. Unlike global warming or cooling, it is a hypothesis that can never be rejected and, as such, is a tautology that can always be used to support the collective over the individual.

They want to condemn the poor of the world (and the middle class) to government controlled subsistence living, and their attack on fossil fuels is the means. 

All evidence points to climate change, a fact of life, as being a political exercise with little to nothing to do with science. We might as well accept that the subject is just the handiest one available for elitists/statists to push their agenda that leads to worldwide equality––a dystopia for everyone and a return to the Stone Age. It is long past time to put away all pretenses of what the debate is really about. At its core, it is about statism against humanity.

The people who believe in AGW will not be swayed by data, and for them the debate is over. For those of us willing to look at data, we know that science is never settled and every hypothesis must be supported by observation and the data. After all is said and done, AGW is only a theory supported by computer algorithms but not by data. The current warming trend is modest, has plateaued since 1998, and is most consistent with historical patterns in climate changes predating industrial CO2 production. AGW appears to be a religion more than a science, and though I don't wish to disparage another person's religion, I don't wish to put my money into the collection basket.

The Paris climate talks consisted of a bunch of bureaucrats and NGOs figuring out how keep to themselves in the ruling class.  You're either at the table or on the menu, as they say.  We've been had (but whether it is for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, we don't yet know!).

How does a carbon tax impact other businesses and individuals? Companies and individuals pay higher prices for GHG-intensive energy (and other goods and services) as the costs of a carbon tax are passed down to consumers. The extent to which these higher energy prices impact the overall income of companies and individuals depends on how the tax revenues are used. The overall impact on a company also depends on how much fossil fuel-based energy it uses, how higher energy prices affect their business, and a company’s ability to either minimize or avoid increasing costs (e.g., by using fuel more efficiently or using cleaner fuels) and/or pass along costs to its customers. For example, a carbon tax policy might lessen overall economic impacts on consumers by including provisions to make the carbon tax “revenue neutral.” This involves returning the carbon tax revenues to businesses and individuals through rebates or changes in the tax code (e.g., reducing corporate or capital gains taxes). A carbon tax policy might also direct revenues to fund programs that provide longer-term benefits to consumers and businesses, such as research and development programs or transportation infrastructure.

What is debatable, and always should be, is what accounts for the fluctuations in climate that have existed for millions of year.  One year it may be shifts in solar output, another changes in the earth's orbit, another volcanic activity, another earthquakes and shifts in the earth's crust and yet another year it may be several of these together. Everything that is happening now has happened before and with equal suddenness.  Our planet is effected by many forces that have nothing to do with humans.  Climate change ideology or "warmism" has taken on many of the characteristics of an apocalyptic doomsday cult. It's similar to a primitive tribe imagining that an eclipse is a sign from the gods to obey their witch doctors, or that sacrificing virgins will make the local volcano stop erupting. We could regiment our lifestyle, surrender to the climate ideological elite, and begin executing skeptics and "denialists," as other totalitarian cults have done -- and climate will still change.

There probably isn't a serious climate scientist in the world who thinks that climate is well understood and that the science is settled in any final sense. The term "settled", enormously abused by politicians and the media, refers to the fact that virtually no real scientist believes that human CO2 emissions have no effect on climate. It is "settled" science to acknowledge humans influence climate, the degree to which we have an impact is hotly debated within the field. Another poster herein has said it better than I will, but it is time for the right wing to acknowledge that AGW is real--to some degree--so they can have a seat at the table to discuss policy.

Here is my issue with climate change alarmists:  Look, I get it that we need to protect the earth, its resources and the environment. I breath the same air and drink the same water as you guys do. I REALLY like going out to the wilderness and seeing wild animals frolic and clear streams flowing. But when I hear that some theory is SETTLED and that debate is no longer considered politically correct, and that "deniers" should be prosecuted as Bernie Sanders wants to happen... then suddenly I get the whiff tyranny in the air. I get the same feeling that book reading intellectuals got when the Red Brigades went around in Communist China making sure that an dissent was snuffed out and people were "re-educated". You KNOW you guys are doing that don't you?  You are stifling dissent on a subject that is FAR from settled.  Your militant authoritarianism isn't reassuring at all.  It makes me want to oppose you, even if your ideas may have merit.  You guys really need to look again at your methods. We really need to protect the Earth....and make sure those that told us we need to protect the Earth get RICH for doing so! I can show you the news reports of a lawyer hired by Green groups to do NOTHING but make editorial changes to Wiki articles on warming.  In the Summer before he got caught, he made 150,000 changes to wiki articles, all geared towards deleting anything that refuted warming fears. Wikipedia is good on settled FACTS!  Things that are still up for debate -- it is a terrible source!

IRS Returns Money Illegally Seized from Store Owner in 'Structuring' Case

The IRS seized this guy's life savings. Now he's getting it back

In June 2014, the IRS seized $153,907.99 from Ken Quran's bank account -- his life savings -- even though he did nothing wrong. February 19, 2016

CNN Money - Now, after months of struggle, it looks like the North Carolina convenience store owner is finally going to get it back.

"We asked the IRS to do the right thing, and it did," said Robert Everett Johnson, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, which took Quran's case pro bono.

The IRS wouldn't confirm or deny whether the case was resolved, citing federal privacy laws.

Johnson submitted a petition to the IRS asking that Quran's life savings be returned. After hearing nothing for six months, Johnson sent a letter this week to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, inquiring about the status of the petition.

"Ken is unsure how he will ever be able to afford to retire, as the IRS seized the entire bank account for his business," Johnson wrote.

And the agency did so without ever accusing Quran of any crime.

Here's how: Under federal bank "structuring" laws, the IRS may seize a person's bank assets if it discovers a pattern of frequent transactions under $10,000. Banks are required to report cash transactions over $10,000 and it's a crime if one tries to avoid that reporting by purposefully keeping all transactions below that amount.

The laws are intended to suss out drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime or terrorist activity. But the IRS doesn't need any evidence of wrongdoing before seizing the money.

The end result: Anyone who runs a cash business, such as a convenience store, a restaurant or a bar, can get snared even though they've done nothing wrong.

And people like Quran, 61, don't know what hit them. His bank agreed to give him a $50,000 line of credit to keep his business running.

"I'm working every day, seven days a week. They don't have a right to treat me like that," he told CNNMoney.

The good news is that the IRS changed its policy in October 2014. It decided it would no longer pursue cases with a pattern of transactions under $10,000, if there is no basis to think illegal activity is involved.

The change of policy, however, is not legally binding, Johnson said. And it didn't help resolve Quran's case or other prior cases involving more than 600 people who had at least $43 million seized since 2007.

Double Dipping Government Employees Collect Pensions and Paychecks

Hinsdale police chief will collect pension, still work full-time

Hinsdale police Chief Bradley Bloom, right, will retire Feb. 22 and begin collecting his police pension. But he will still work full time for the village in a newly created administrative position.

February 18, 2016

Pioneer Press - Police Chief Bradley Bloom is giving up his badge to take another job with the village, thereby allowing him to continue earning a salary while collecting his pension.

Village officials said they created the temporary position of assistant village manager/director of public safety specifically for Bloom, so younger officers could benefit from his experience.

Bloom, 56, is not ready to retire, he said, but after 34 years as a police officer, his pension will not grow enough to offset his contribution into the pension system, if he continued as chief.

The Village Board on Tuesday unanimously approved a three-year contract that pays Bloom $120,000 a year for the new full-time position. That's less than he currently earns as police chief. But in addition to the salary as director of public safety, Bloom will receive his pension, which will be 75 percent of his $151,576 annual salary as chief. And by Illinois pension laws, Bloom's pension will grow by 3 percent of that amount each year.

In comparison, if he continued to work as police chief, he likely would receive the 2 percent raises village employees have gotten the past few years, but he also would have to pay 10 percent of his salary into the police pension fund.

As public safety director, he no longer will have to pay into the police pension fund. He will contribute to the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, as other village employees do. But because his contract with the village is for three years, with two possible one-year extensions, he is not expected to reach the 10 years necessary to collect a pension from the municipal retirement fund."He will never collect two village pensions," said Village President Thomas Cauley, Jr. And the position will end when Bloom's contract does, Cauley said.

Like all retiring village employees, Bloom also will be paid for his unused vacation time, which in his case equals about $26,000, village manager Kathleen Gargano said. The village also allows employees to deposit a portion of the amount of sick time they have accrued and not taken into a post-employment health benefit plan, which can be used only for health insurance costs after they retire. Bloom's balance is about $27,000, Gargano said.

Other police and fire chiefs have retired from the department where they worked most of their careers and been hired in other municipalities, so they could collect both their pension and a salary, and potentially a second pension.

Hinsdale's previous two fire chiefs retired and joined fire departments in Western Springs and Bartlett, Cauley said.

Feds Will Use the Recent Drop in Gas Prices as an Excuse for a $10-a-barrel Tax on Oil

"I would submit why would the American people believe this money would be used for infrastructure improvements. Our government is consistently using money from one program to pay for something else. If gas taxes had been used to maintain our roads as they were intended, the deterioration existing today would not be nearly as bad. Instead of always looking for somewhere to spend money, a competent local, state and federal government would have never let them get this bad to begin with. The proposed tax would not affect the U.S. too much right now, until the price of oil goes back up again. Everyone always focuses on emissions and the carbon tax. We always forget how many things use crude oil. Anything which is manufactured in the world uses a product derived from oil at one point or another. Plastic, vinyl, rubber, pvc, the majority of medications, carpet, electronics, wind turbines, solar panels, chemicals, and many more things all depend upon crude oil." - Jeffrey Hart 

Why so many economists back Obama’s idea of a tax on oil

February 8, 2016

The Washington Post - When the White House announced last week that President Obama would pursue a $10-a-barrel tax on oil to fund major transportation system reforms, there were instant denunciations from many politicians, and especially congressional Republicans.

“A $10-a-barrel tax on oil will be dead on arrival in the House,” Rep. Bill Flores (R-Tex.) said. “It is clear that in his last year in office the president is more concerned with his radical climate policies and pleasing special interest groups than providing economic stability for hardworking American families. This proposed tax will do nothing more than raise costs on consumers, who are still struggling with stagnant wages.”

These critics were, in a sense, merely reflecting public opinion at large — much research suggests that gasoline taxes (and the proposed oil tax would certainly raise the price of gasoline) are very unpopular. For instance, a 2015 study of the matter found, “large majorities of Americans (65-70%) oppose higher taxes on gasoline and electricity” (although the research found that different messages about gas taxes can reduce resistance somewhat).

But despite the lack of public support, a large number of economists are convinced that taxes on fossil fuels in general are a pretty good idea. There have long been calls by economists for putting a tax on carbon in all of its forms — not just from burning oil or gasoline. The goal is to address, in economist speak, the “market failure” that occurs in this case because of the “negative externality” that is greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon Dioxide is Generally Regarded as a Safe and Non-toxic, Inert Gas

While convenient to use the term 'carbon emissions', it's not accurate to conflate it with 'CO2', carbon dioxide. CO2 is a vaporous (invisible) gas, NOT soot or dust or grit -- in other words, not an air pollutant. The Supreme Court, under the Clean Air Act, made a huge mistake in allowing the EPA to control it, and it needs to be reversed. The enormous hoax, promulgated by the anti-capitalist, that we can manage climate by keeping fossil fuels 'in the ground' is so heavily entrenched in the dogma of our public schools that the little skulls of 'mush' are already seriously tainted.  It'll take generations to straighten this mess out.

The term ‘carbon pollution’ is unscientific and misleading

February 20, 2014

JustFactsDaily - “Language is power,” and “with careful selection of and modification to language,” wrote Evie Loveband in the journal Idiom, any one person “has the power to control the debate and rewrite history.” This truism spurs endless debates over terminology in the political arena: Are we talking about an “unborn child” or a “fetus”? Is he “gay” or “homosexual”? Are we eating “lean finely textured beef” or “pink slime”? Should we “give amnesty to illegal immigrants” or “legalize undocumented workers”?

Ultimately, many language choices are subjective, but some cross the line from preference to deceitfulness. In his essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote about people who use words “in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.”

Such is the case with purveyors of the term “carbon pollution,” a phrase that conflates carbon dioxide with noxious chemicals like carbon monoxide and black carbon. Carbon dioxide or CO2 is the primary man-made greenhouse gas, but it is also a natural substance that is essential for life. Additionally, it is colorless, odorless, and nontoxic at many times the concentration in earth’s atmosphere. In fact, nature produces considerably more CO2 than man.

Thus, for reasons detailed below, referring to CO2 as “carbon pollution” is highly misleading.

First, the phrase “carbon pollution” is scientifically inaccurate because there are more than ten million different carbon compounds, and the word “carbon” could refer to any of them. Some of the more notorious of these compounds are highly poisonous, such as carbon monoxide (a deadly gas) and black carbon (the primary ingredient of cancerous and mutagenic soot). Using a phrase that does not distinguish between such drastically different substances is a sure way to misinform people.

Second, the term “pollution” conjures up images of smoke pouring from smokestacks and sewage flowing into rivers, which are markedly different from CO2 emissions. Those who use the word “pollution” for CO2 draw no distinction between these scenarios, which again encourages a false impression.

Some of the more prominent users of this verbiage go even further to foster the idea of CO2 as a toxic contaminant. For example, while referring to CO2 as “carbon pollution,” President Obama criticizes “polluters” who “emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and pollute the air that we breathe.” In stark contrast, the academic book Carbon Dioxide Capture for Storage in Deep Geologic Formations explains that:

Carbon dioxide is generally regarded as a safe and non-toxic, inert gas. It is an essential part of the fundamental biological processes of all living things. It does not cause cancer, affect development or suppress the immune system in humans.

Fueling the deceitful impression advanced by Obama and others, major media outlets, such as Politico, NBC News, and the New York Times, publish articles and commentaries that refer to CO2 as “carbon pollution” with pictures of billowing smokestacks, such as these:

 
The fact is that none of the smoke in these pictures is CO2, because CO2 is invisible except under extreme pressures and temperatures that cause it to transition from a gas to a liquid or solid. Such conditions are far outside the range of anything found in smokestacks.

Some argue that it is acceptable to call CO2 a pollutant because of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling that allowed the EPA to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act’s expansive definition of pollution. Such rationale, however, is not a license to use these words in ways that create misleading impressions.

Furthermore, why would anyone who honestly wants to inform people employ an ambiguous and unscientific phrase like “carbon pollution” in favor of a clear and scientifically accurate term like “greenhouse gas”? Only those who simply echo what they hear or those wantonly pushing global warming-related taxes, regulations or similar polices would use such verbiage.

In sum, those who refer to carbon dioxide as “pollution” blur a critical distinction between noxious pollutants and greenhouse gases. Moreover, media outlets that consciously engage in this practice blur a critical distinction between journalism and activism.

Media Smearing Teachers Who Don't Follow the Script to Indoctrinate Our Youth

Hey US science teachers, leave those climate myths alone

As most readers are aware, and stated in posts a few hours after (ClimateGate) CG broke out, Mike’s Nature trick was first uncovered by UC here. [Source]

Apple CEO Tim Cook's Full Letter Responding to the FBI's Court Order to Create a Backdoor That Would Circumvent iPhone Security

"Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one." - Benjamin Franklin

Cook says that as good as the FBI’s intentions are, forcing Apple to create a backdoor into its otherwise heavily protected products doesn’t seem right. “And ultimately,” he concludes, “we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.”

The following is a letter from Apple CEO Tim Cook in response to a Judge order for the company to hack the phone of a terrorist who killed 14 in San Bernardino in December.

A Message to Our Customers

The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers. We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand.

This moment calls for public discussion, and we want our customers and people around the country to understand what is at stake.

The Need for Encryption

Smartphones, led by iPhone, have become an essential part of our lives. People use them to store an incredible amount of personal information, from our private conversations to our photos, our music, our notes, our calendars and contacts, our financial information and health data, even where we have been and where we are going.

All that information needs to be protected from hackers and criminals who want to access it, steal it, and use it without our knowledge or permission. Customers expect Apple and other technology companies to do everything in our power to protect their personal information, and at Apple we are deeply committed to safeguarding their data.

Compromising the security of our personal information can ultimately put our personal safety at risk. That is why encryption has become so important to all of us.

For many years, we have used encryption to protect our customers’ personal data because we believe it’s the only way to keep their information safe. We have even put that data out of our own reach, because we believe the contents of your iPhone are none of our business.

The San Bernardino Case

We were shocked and outraged by the deadly act of terrorism in San Bernardino last December. We mourn the loss of life and want justice for all those whose lives were affected. The FBI asked us for help in the days following the attack, and we have worked hard to support the government’s efforts to solve this horrible crime. We have no sympathy for terrorists.

When the FBI has requested data that’s in our possession, we have provided it. Apple complies with valid subpoenas and search warrants, as we have in the San Bernardino case. We have also made Apple engineers available to advise the FBI, and we’ve offered our best ideas on a number of investigative options at their disposal.

We have great respect for the professionals at the FBI, and we believe their intentions are good. Up to this point, we have done everything that is both within our power and within the law to help them. But now the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone.

Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.

The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.

The Threat to Data Security

Some would argue that building a backdoor for just one iPhone is a simple, clean-cut solution. But it ignores both the basics of digital security and the significance of what the government is demanding in this case.

The Supreme Court Sided with Objective Science Against Obama, and Now Justice Scalia is Dead

In December 2015, President Barack Obama vetoed two measures that would have blocked steps that his administration is taking to address climate change. One would have nullified carbon pollution standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. The second would have voided a set of national standards designed to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas pollution from existing power plants. In a letter notifying Congress of his decision, Obama says climate change is a "profound threat" that must be addressed. Obama has made addressing climate change a priority. He recently praised a new international climate agreement reached at a Paris conference and credited his administration as being a driving force behind the deal. He rejected the measures through a rare "pocket veto," intended to be used when Congress has adjourned. A pocket vote essentially takes effect when the president fails to sign a bill within 10 days. [Source]

Tuesday night, February 9, 2016, even as votes were being tallied in New Hampshire, the Supreme Court shocked many — including the Obama administration — by putting on hold the president’s signature climate policy, the Clean Power Plan, pending resolution of a lawsuit against it by a number of states, utilities and coal companies. Everybody knew the Clean Power Plan would face major legal challenges, but few thought they’d significantly derail it so early on. One legal expert, the Sierra Club’s Bruce Nilles, told The Washington Post it was “unprecedented for the Supreme Court to stay a rule at this point in litigation. They do this in death-penalty cases.”

Saturday morning, February 13, 2016, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead in a hotel room. Scalia spent his final hours as part of a group of about 35 weekend guests who had arrived at Cibolo Creek Ranch, a West Texas resort, at around noon Friday. [Source]

The Supreme Court sided with science against Obama

February 15, 2016

New York Post - In his State of the Union Address, President Obama invited “anybody [who] wants to dispute the science around climate change . . . to have at it.”

The Supreme Court’s response? Thank you, Mr. President, for the offer. We will.

On Feb. 9, the court upheld a delay of Obama’s war on fossil fuels, which is supposed to “stop climate change,” in the form of new restrictions on factories’ greenhouse-gas emissions. Apparently a majority of the court is less confident of the “science around climate change” than Obama is.

As well they should be. Obama’s policies will have negligible effects on the climate and will be all pain with no gain.

Two critical points about “the science around climate change” stand out in a review recently completed by the CO2 Coalition, a new independent, nonpartisan scientific-educational group (CO2Coalition.org).

First, carbon dioxide, CO2, is emphatically NOT a “pollutant.” All living things are built of carbon that comes from CO2. An increase in essential CO2 in the atmosphere will be a huge benefit to plants and agriculture. Satellite measurements show that the increase of CO2 over the last few decades has already caused a pronounced greening of the planet — especially in arid regions.

For tens of millions of years, plants have been coping with a “CO2 famine.” Current CO2 concentrations of a few hundred parts per million (ppm) are close to starvation levels compared to the several thousand ppm that prevailed over most of history.

We support the cost-effective control of real pollutants associated with the use of fossil fuels — for example, fly ash, oxides of nitrogen and sulfur or smog-forming volatile hydrocarbons. But CO2 isn’t a pollutant, and there’s no reason to control it.

Second, the “warming” from CO2 — and yes, CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” — has been much less than predicted by the climate models Obama bases his policies on. For 20 years, the temperature has been virtually unchanged, in stark contrast to model predictions.

The war on fossil fuels isn’t based on science but on unreliable climate models. Rather than trying to correct the models, Team Obama is trying to “dispute the science” by trying to manufacture scary warming trends.

A recent letter to the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology by more than 300 experts on data quality pointed out that the feds’ attempt to erase or ignore evidence of the recent lack of global warming arguably violated the Data Quality Act of 2001, which requires that “highly influential scientific assessments,” bearing the imprimatur of the federal government, be subject to rigorous external peer review.

It exposes the hollowness of the left’s claim that “97 percent of scientists” support Team Obama’s version of climate science.

Satellite measurements of atmospheric temperatures are the genuine gold standard — and they show negligible warming for the past two decades. Since the Obama administration can’t read just satellite data (as they have tried to do with surface data), they have unleashed a campaign to discredit the satellite temperature record.

The observational record indicates that the temperature increase by the year 2100 will be less than 1 degree Celsius as a result of CO2 emissions. This small temperature increase, together with the robust benefits to plants and agriculture, will benefit the world.

How about other concerns? Some claim that more CO2 causes extreme weather, accelerating a rise in sea levels or other horrors. But extensive global measurements reveal no increase in extreme weather: The trends in tornadoes, droughts, floods and hurricanes are flat over the past generation. Sea levels are rising at about the same rate they did before the rising concentrations of CO2 during the past century.

Inexpensive, reliable energy from fossil fuels has raised living standards in the developed world to levels that only the wealthy could dream of a few centuries ago. Eliminating fossil fuels would do nothing to stop climate change, but it would keep much of the developing world in poverty.

Rising energy costs would hurt the less privileged populations of the developed world as well.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dies Four Days After He and Four Other Republican Members Handed Down a Series of Unexpected Orders Halting Environmental Regulations

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead in his room Saturday morning, February 13, 2016. Scalia spent his final hours as part of a group of about 35 weekend guests who had arrived at Cibolo Creek Ranch, a West Texas resort, at around noon Friday. His body was flown to northern Virginia from Texas late Sunday after investigators determined there was no foul play in the 79-year-old's death. Judge Cinderela Guevara of Presidio County, Texas, told Fox News that she determined Scalia had died of natural causes. Guevara also said that she had spoken to local investigators and U.S. marshals, as well as Scalia's family and personal physician, before determining that an autopsy was not necessary. Another justice of the peace in Presidio, Juanita Bishop, disagreed with Guevara’s decision not to order one, telling The Washington Post, "If it had been me … I would want to know."  

According to the San Antonio Express-News on February 15th, Guevara said Scalia's doctor told her that the justice was suffering from minor ailments, but did not elaborate further. However, according to Good Morning America on February 16, Guevara said she spoke to Scalia's doctor in Washington who told her that Scalia had been sick and had visited his office twice during the week leading up to the trip. The Associated Press reported that Guevara said the doctor told her that Scalia had a history of high blood pressure, heart trouble and was considered too weak to undergo shoulder surgery following a recent injury. Guevara told ABC News that the death certificate will say that he died of natural causes with myocardial infarction, better known as a heart attack, being a contributing factor.

“We discovered the judge in bed, a pillow over his head. His bed clothes were unwrinkled. He was lying very restfully. It looked like he had not quite awakened from a nap,” Cibolo Creek Ranch owner John Poindexter told the San Antonio Express-News on Saturday.

The Supreme Court Just Gave The Finger To Obama’s Plan To Slow Climate Change

February 9, 2016

Think Progress - The five Republican members of the Supreme Court handed down a series of unexpected orders Tuesday night, February 8th, halting environmental regulations that were expected to “avoid thousands of premature deaths and mean thousands fewer asthma attacks and hospitalizations in 2030 and every year beyond,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency. As ThinkProgress has previously explained, these regulations “represent the most significant thing America has ever done to combat climate change.”

The justices cast their vote along party lines. All four of the Court’s Democrats voted to allow the rules to go into effect.

The Court offered no insight into its reasoning beyond its vote. Under Tuesday evening’s orders, “the Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Generating Units,’ is stayed pending disposition of the applicants’ petitions for review in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and disposition of the applicants’ petition for a writ of certiorari, if such writ is sought.” In effect, this means that the rules will remain suspended until a federal appeals court rules on this challenge to the regulations, the parties challenging the rules seek Supreme Court review, and the justices decide how they wish to handle that request.

Given the complexity of this case and the Supreme Court’s schedule, Tuesday evening’s order could easily delay the rules until after President Obama leaves office — if they get to go into effect at all.

In the 2007 case Massachusetts v. EPA, Justice Anthony Kennedy broke with the other four members of the Court’s conservative bloc to join an opinion holding that the Clean Air Act permits the EPA to “regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles.” The Obama administration rules halted in this latest case, by contrast, deal with greenhouse emissions from existing power plants. Nevertheless, Kennedy’s vote in the Massachusetts case offered hope to environmentalists and to the people whose lives would be saved by the suspended regulations that he would once again side with the EPA.

The ultimate outcome of Kennedy’s vote remains uncertain. With his vote to suspend the rules, however, Kennedy casts a cloud of doubt over whether the United States of America is capable of taking steps needed to mitigate climate change.

Results in key cases could change with Scalia's death

February 15, 2016

AP - The Supreme Court abhors even numbers. But that's just what the court will have to deal with, perhaps for many months, after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Eight justices will decide what to do, creating the prospect of 4-4 ties.

Here are some questions and answers about the effect on the court of the death of its conservative icon and longest-serving justice:

Q. What happens to cases in which Scalia cast a vote or drafted an opinion, but no decision has been publicly announced?

A. It may sound harsh, but Scalia's votes and draft opinions in pending cases no longer matter. Veteran Supreme Court lawyer Roy Englert says that "the vote of a deceased justice does not count."

Nothing is final at the court until it is released publicly and, while it is rare, justices have flipped their votes and the outcomes in some cases.

Q. What happens if there is a tie?

A. The justices have two options. They can vote to hear the case a second time when a new colleague joins them or they can hand down a one-sentence opinion that upholds the result reached in the lower court without setting a nationwide rule. When confirmation of a new justice is expected to happen quickly, re-argument is more likely. In this political environment, the vacancy could last into 2017.

Q. Why doesn't the court like tie votes?

A. A major function of the Supreme Court is to resolve disputes among lower courts and establish legal precedents for the entire country. Tie votes frustrate those goals and they essentially waste the court's time.

Q. How does Scalia's death affect specific cases?

A. It deprives conservatives of a key vote and probably will derail some anticipated conservative victories in major Supreme Court cases, including one in which labor unions appeared headed for a big defeat. Next month's Supreme Court clash over contraceptives, religious liberty and President Barack Obama's health care law also now seems more likely to favor the Obama administration.

Netanyahu Says He Will Surround All of the State of Israel with Fences and Barriers

Netanyahu: We Will Surround Israel With Walls 'To Defend Against Wild Beasts'

A Palestinian girl walks in front of a section of the Israeli barrier in al-Ram in the West Bank on the outskirts of Jerusalem, May 25, 2011. The government is planning to surround the entirety of Israel with security barriers. Baz Ratner/Reuters

February 9, 2016

Newsweek - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Tuesday that the government is in the planning stages of a multi-year project to surround the entirety of Israel with security barriers to defend against what he called “wild beasts” in the region.

“At the end, in the State of Israel, as I see it, there will be a fence that spans it all. I’ll be told, ‘This is what you want, to protect the villa?’ The answer is yes,” said Netanyahu, according to Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz.

“Will we surround all of the State of Israel with fences and barriers? The answer is yes. In the area that we live in, we must defend ourselves against the wild beasts.”

His comments came during a visit to Israel’s southern border with Jordan, where he was viewing the first stage of the planned security barrier that will stretch across the entirety of Israel’s eastern border.

Israel is surrounded by a number of Arab states and territories, namely Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Israeli leader added that the construction plan will include closing the breaches in the separation barrier between Israel and the West Bank.

“This thing costs many billions, and we’re working on a multi-year plan of prioritization so it would be spread out over years in order to gradually build it, but to complete it to defend the State of Israel,” he said.

The Village of Freeport on the South Shore of Long Island Scans Every License Plate That Rolls into Town

A New York village that installed a ring of license plate scanning cameras in hopes of improving policing has found the monitors have become something of a double-edged sword

February 7, 2016

AP - When this Long Island village switched on its "ring of steel" last fall, it knew it was getting a potent policing tool. The system of 27 cameras would scan the license plate of every single vehicle that rolled into town. If a wanted criminal drove through, the system would sound an alert. If someone burglarized a house, the data could be mined to see who was on the road at the time.

Police weren't prepared, though, for the firehose of less-valuable intelligence generated by the $750,000 system.

Since the scanners went live Nov. 2, they have been triggering an average of 700 alarms a day, mainly about cars on the road with expired or suspended registration stickers. Officers have impounded 500 vehicles. They've written more than 2,000 court summonses, mostly for minor violations.

"It is a tremendous amount of workload that has been increased due to this new technology," said Miguel Bermudez, police chief in the town of Freeport.

Mayor Robert Kennedy dismissed any notion that the system may be diverting the department's attention from more serious offenses while Bermudez noted that it quickly became clear his 95 officers would be unable to respond to every ping signaling an infraction. After overtime expenses jumped at least 20 percent, the department has lately adjusted its approach, responding only to higher priority alarms.

But the chief is still talking about hiring another six to eight officers who would be dedicated solely to traffic duties and responding to license plate scanner alerts, in part because there have been some major successes.

In January, an officer responding to an alert about a stolen car discovered that the man behind the wheel, Tremain Williams, was wanted for killing a man in Norfolk, Virginia. Police found an M-4 assault rifle in the trunk. Williams has pleaded not guilty; his attorney declined to comment.

In its first 90 days of operation, 15 stolen cars were spotted and returned to their rightful owners.

About two dozen other crime suspects have been arrested, including two men suspected in a series of armed robberies who were in a stolen car as well as a man wanted for allegedly burglarizing local churches.

Kennedy would not say how much money has been generated through the village system, noting that it has only been up and running for about 90 days and it isn't possible to determine what the cost has been beyond the installation fee.

The use of license plate scanners has been proliferating at law enforcement agencies nationwide.

A 2012 study by the Police Executive Research Forum, a research and policy group, found that about 7 in 10 law enforcement agencies nationwide have at least some access to the technology.

Some departments mount scanners in patrol cars that capture data as officers drive around town. Others buy access to databases maintained by private companies that mount plate scanning cameras on tow trucks.

Civil liberties advocates have raised some privacy concerns. They say the cameras capture the movements of millions of drivers, regardless of whether they are being investigated by law enforcement.

Freeport's cameras have the capability of scanning about 2,000 cars per minute. So far, the village system has scanned plates more than 15 million times.

Different states and jurisdiction have different rules about how long collected plate data can be stored and when it may be accessed.

Jason Starr, the Nassau County chapter director at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said he is concerned that Freeport has yet to provide detailed information about who has access to the information.

"This is data that can be abused," he said. "There needs to be really tight measures on who has access to this information."

Iran Wants Oil Payments in Euros, Not Dollars or Any Other Currencies

Iran wants oil payments in euros only

February 5, 2016

PressTV - Iran indicated on Friday that it wants to settle payments for its new and outstanding oil sales in euros and not in dollars or any other currencies.

Reuters has quoted an official from the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) as saying that the rule applies to newly signed deals with France’s energy giant Total, Spain’s refiner Cepsa and Russia’s Lukoil.

"In our invoices we mention a clause that buyers of our oil will have to pay in euros, considering the exchange rate versus the dollar around the time of delivery," the NIOC source, who has not been named, has told Reuters.

Iran has also told its trading partners including India that owe it billions of dollars that it wants to be paid in euros rather than US dollars, added the person.

The NIOC source further emphasized that the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) had instituted a policy while the country was still under sanctions to carry out foreign trade in euros.

"Iran shifted to the euro and cancelled trade in dollars because of political reasons," the source said.

Hossein Yaqoubi-Miab, the director for international affairs department of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), said in December that Iran says it wants India to pay outstanding oil dues in euros, stressing that it needs the euros to pay the installments for the loans it has received for its infrastructure projects. 

Yaqoubi-Miab added that preparations have already been made by Tehran to receive euro payments from India.

Indian refineries should pay equal to some $6.5 billion in outstanding oil dues.

Reuters has further added in its report that Indian officials are working on a mechanism that could involve local banks United Commercial Bank (UCO) and IDBI Bank for handling payments to Iran.

UCO CEO R.K. Takkar said the bank is involved in payments to Iran, but did not say if there were any plans to change the payment mechanism.

FBI Arrests Nearly Every Single Elected Official in Crystal City, Texas

FBI Arrests Nearly Every Single Elected Official In A Texas Town

February 7, 2016 

Think Progress - Only two of the elected officials in a remote Texas town were left unscathed after the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) arrested six members under a federal indictment that accuses them of taking bribes and helping an illegal gambling operator in exchange for favors, the Associated Press reported.

Those arrested in Crystal City, Texas include the mayor, the city attorney who is also the city manager, two current councilmen, and a former councilman.

“The indictment alleges that these public officials and this businessman solicited and accepted bribes in exchange for official action, such as voting to award city contracts to, waive certain tax payments by, and conduct certain inspections to give unfair advantage to those paying bribes,” Richard Durbin, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas, said in a press release. 

One of the two remaining top officials was previously arrested on federal charges of smuggling immigrants across the southern U.S. border.

According to the Department of Justice indictment, Crystal City’s officials were accused of using “their official positions to enrich themselves by soliciting and accepting bribes from persons seeking to do business” since February 2015.

The city manager, William James Jonas, III, was accused of managing the bribery scheme, in which a contractor provided bribes worth more than $12,000 to city officials in exchange for a city contract and unfair advantages.

Ngoc Tri Nguyen, a city councilmember, was accused of providing payment to Mayor Ricardo Lopez, “including $6,000, in exchange for various official acts from Lopez and Jonas.” Nguyen was allegedly running illegal gambling rooms, as well.

Joel Barajas, the remaining councilman without an arrest warrant, said that the city has about $2 million in unpaid bills and was facing bankruptcy.

“For the time being, they remain the elected officials and the representatives of that city,” Durbin said. 

Maria Sanchez Rivera, a lifelong resident told the Associated Press. 

“Crystal City is a good town. If you do wrong, you have to face your consequences. We’ve got laws for everything and we’ve got to abide by what the law says.”

Ron Paul: Ted Cruz is Owned by Goldman Sachs

Ron Paul: Ted Cruz is no libertarian

February 5, 2016

Now that Rand Paul is out of the race for the White House, his father Ron Paul, who ran in 2008 and 2012, on Friday warned his son’s former supporters that Ted Cruz isn’t a free-market libertarian:

“You take a guy like Cruz, people are liking the Cruz — they think he’s for the free market, and [in reality] he’s owned by Goldman Sachs. I mean, he and Hillary have more in common than we would have with either Cruz or Trump or any of them, so I just don’t think there is much picking,” Paul said of the Texas senator on Fox Business’ “Varney & Company”.

When asked if there was a candidate who was truly for the free market, the former Texas congressman said that since his son it out of the race, there isn't a candidate, Republican or Democrat, that is a libertarian:

“On occasion, Bernie comes up with libertarian views when he talks about taking away the cronyism on Wall Street, so in essence he’s right, and occasionally he voted against war.”

"It's hard to find anybody -- since Rand is out of it -- anybody that would take a libertarian position, hardcore libertarian position on privacy, on the war issue and on economic policy."

“So I always say: You can search for a long time, but you’re not gonna find anybody in the Republican or Democratic primary that even comes slightly close to ever being able to claim themselves a libertarian,” he concluded.

During a Mises Institute conference on January 30, Paul commented on the views of socialists/progressives (video above):.

“[Socialists] will not listen to the argument that there’s a difference between somebody getting bailed out by the Federal Reserve… versus somebody who produces a good product and we [the People] vote them their money and they haven’t cheated, stolen or given us a bad product,” he said. “I think it’s sort of an envy and resentment, but I’ve talked to them and I have to tell you, I haven’t converted many die-hard progressives.”

“Some progressives, if you watch them on the Internet, will have really close agreements and they might be talking about the same issues, but boy they don’t want you to even introduce the notion that libertarians are with them on this because they’re terrified we might encroach on their power to redistribute wealth [by force].”

Former DHS Employee Says Staff Was Ordered to Destroy Records of Possible Jihadists and Were Prohibited from Entering Pertinent Information into the Federal Database

"True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.... Many leftists view Hillary as a sell-out because she claims to hold moderate views on some issues. However, Hillary is simply following Saul Alinsky’s counsel to do and say whatever it takes to gain power. Obama is also an Alinskyite.... Obama spent years teaching workshops on the Alinsky method. In 1985 he began a four-year stint as a community organizer in Chicago, working for an Alinskyite group called the Developing Communities Project.... Camouflage is key to Alinsky-style organizing. While trying to build coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama caught flak for not attending church himself. He became an instant churchgoer." [Richard Poe, November 27, 2007]

DHS ordered me to scrub records of Muslims with terror ties

This makes perfect sense.
Allow terrorists in. They kill someone or blow something up.
Then the government cracks down on personal liberties and takes more control over our lives.
Create problem. Provide solution.

February 5, 2016

Philip Haney, The Hill - Amid the chaos of the 2009 holiday travel season, jihadists planned to slaughter 290 innocent travelers on a Christmas Day flight from the Netherlands to Detroit, Michigan. Twenty-three-year old Nigerian Muslim Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab intended to detonate Northwest Airlines Flight 253, but the explosives in his underwear malfunctioned and brave passengers subdued him until he could be arrested. The graphic and traumatic defeat they planned for the United States failed, that time.

Following the attempted attack, President Obama threw the intelligence community under the bus for its failure to “connect the dots.” He said, “this was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.”

Most Americans were unaware of the enormous damage to morale at the Department of Homeland Security, where I worked, his condemnation caused. His words infuriated many of us because we knew his administration had been engaged in a bureaucratic effort to destroy the raw material—the actual intelligence—we had collected for years, and erase those dots. The dots constitute the intelligence needed to keep Americans safe, and the Obama administration was ordering they be wiped away.

After leaving my 15-year career at DHS, I can no longer be silent about the dangerous state of America’s counter-terror strategy, our leaders’ willingness to compromise the security of citizens for the ideological rigidity of political correctness—and, consequently, our vulnerability to devastating, mass-casualty attack.

Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to “connect dots.”

Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database.

A few weeks later, in my office at the Port of Atlanta, the television hummed with the inevitable Congressional hearings that follow any terrorist attack. While members of Congress grilled Obama administration officials, demanding why their subordinates were still failing to understand the intelligence they had gathered, I was being forced to delete and scrub the records. And I was well aware that, as a result, it was going to be vastly more difficult to “connect the dots” in the future—especially before an attack occurs.

The Science Is Not Settled Regarding Anthropogenic Climate Change

Climate Change Theorists Consistently Deceive with Glaring Omission

February 4, 2016

CNS News - In the steady stream of published articles on climate change there seems to be a consistent omission of a critical element. This was once again brought to my attention when, as an MIT alum, I read the January/February issue of the MIT Technology Review [TR] dedicated to climate change.

Unlike many of the environmental pop pieces, the TR editors, thankfully, were careful to present realistic views of dealing with climate change technologically and economically. Wind and solar power were treated with uncommon candor in admitting that in spite of declining costs these intermittent energy sources are not sufficient at affordable prices for a modern industrial society.

With a mature appreciation of the uncertainty in climate forecasts, one article described a policy alternative to the so-called “precautionary principle”—the politically popular idea that policy makers should focus on avoiding an imagined worst-case scenario at all costs. Instead, it described a pragmatic trial-and-error approach at far lower cost that deals with specific consequences of climate change as they actually occur, not as imagined by computer models.

However, omitted in these articles are discussions of climate change in the pre-industrial past, particularly in the last two millennia, for which there is significant source material. The reason this neglect is so critical is that it is commonly assumed that atmospheric CO2 is the only meaningful variable behind climate change. Since pre-industrial levels of CO2 appear to have consistently been below 300ppm with little variation, and levels since the mid-twentieth century have steadily risen to about 400ppm today, atmospheric CO2 is an obvious anthropogenic variable. And, the reasoning goes, since both CO2 levels and global temperature averages have increased together, man’s fossil fuel usage must be causing global warming. The science is settled. We can move on.

Well, let’s continue this line of reasoning and see where it goes. If atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperature are truly correlated, then they ought to be as correlated before the industrial revolution as they are afterward. Pre-industrial CO2 levels remained relatively constant. Did pre-industrial global temperature levels also remain relatively constant? No, they did not. Over the last thousand years, for example, there was the well-attested Medieval Warm Period from about 900–1300 followed by the equally well-attested Little Ice Age from about 1350–1800.

Why does the “settled science” of the CO2-temperature relationship fail to work prior to the age of heavy industry? Obviously, global temperature must be affected by at least one other variable. What is it, or what are they? Until this missing element is known, no climate change mitigation policy based solely on the single variable CO2-temperature correlation can be assured of success. And until this element is openly discussed and debated, published articles on climate change, no matter how well intentioned, deceptively leave readers with a tunnel vision on a very important topic.

Charles A. Clough, M.S. (Atmospheric Science), Th.M. (Old Testament and Semitics), Retired Chief, U.S. Army Atmospheric Effects Team, Aberdeen Proving Ground, and Adjunct Professor, Chafer Theological Seminary, Bel Air, MD, is a Contributing Writer for The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

Obama Explains That the U.S. Government Has Constructed a New System to Indefinitely and Preventively Imprison People Without Charges for Potential Future Crimes

Conspiracy Theories

Cass R. Sunstein
Harvard Law School

Adrian Vermeule
Harvard Law School

January 15, 2008

Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 08-03
U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 199
U of Chicago Law & Economics, Olin Working Paper No. 387

Abstract:

Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event. A recent example is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United States. Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law. The first challenge is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories prosper; the second challenge is to understand how such theories might be undermined. Such theories typically spread as a result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 30