"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
Global warming hoax unraveling
February 7th, 2010, 12:00 am by Thomas J. Lucente Jr.
Is the biggest hoax in human history finally collapsing?
In light of the revelation late last year — thanks to the unauthorized (stolen?) release of e-mail correspondence among themselves — that climatologists have been essentially lying to the rest of the world for years, it came as no surprise that other manmade climate change claims would begin to unravel.
A key U.N. climate change panel member said a projection by the group on how fast the Himalayan glaciers are melting appears to lack scientific evidence.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report says the Himalayan glaciers are very likely to disappear by 2035 if the present melting rate continues.
However, Chris Field said it was not exactly clear what the source was for the claim.
Field is co-chair of one of the panel’s working groups. He told The Associated Press that the panel was working hard to clarify the situation.
Additionally, many scientists, including Field, are claiming several other errors in the IPCC report, including one dealing with losses from disasters and another on the subject of Amazon forests, though the IPCC refuses to back away from its claims.
Several groups that support the idea of anthropogenic climate change, including Greenpeace UK, want Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, replaced because he refused to acknowledge the mistakes in the report.
Meanwhile, in Great Britain, the Information Commissioner’s Office, the nation’s data-protection watchdog, reported that the aforementioned stolen e-mails at the University of East Anglia’s climate research unit demonstrate that the university was illegally hiding data from the public. Read the rest of this entry »
High-Speed Rail: Fast Track to the Poorhouse
January 31st, 2010, 12:00 am by Thomas J. Lucente Jr.
It must be a sickness. Perhaps the superb doctors at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., can give President Barack Obama something to cure his delusional state.
On Thursday, a day after a State of the Union address in which St. Barack made silly promises such as a spending freeze that might save $250 billion if maintained for 10 years, he handed out $8 billion for a high-speed rail project that will be a further drain on our already fragile economy.
Better yet, his administration is comparing this latest ill-considered raid on the public treasury to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s interstate highway project.
What hubris!
The two projects are incomparable. As Randal O’Toole, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute wrote last year, high-speed rail is not the new interstate highway system.
O’Toole pointed out five differences: 1) Before Congress approved the Interstate Highway System, it had a good idea how much it would cost; 2) Highway users paid for interstate highways, whereas high-speed rail will be almost entirely subsidized by general taxpayers who will rarely use it; 3) Interstate highways connect all 48 contiguous states and major metropolitan areas and the high-speed rail plan consists of six unconnected networks that reach only 33 states and fewer than two-thirds of the nation’s 100 largest urban areas; 4) The average American traveled 4,000 miles on interstates in 2007 while high-speed rail proponents optimistically estimate that the average American would ride the high-speed rail system fewer than 60 miles per year; and 5) Interstate highways improved social welfare by increasing highway safety while high-speed rail would actually increase energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Read the rest of this entry »
Cato Experts Give Obama’s State of the Union a Video Fisking
January 28th, 2010, 8:43 pm by Thomas J. Lucente Jr.
Another great video from the Cato Institute.
Court decision a victory for free speech
January 24th, 2010, 12:00 am by Thomas J. Lucente Jr.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck another victory for those who believe the Constitution is relevant and that free speech is more than a slogan.
The court, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, struck down as unconstitutional a provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act. This was probably the most significant First Amendment ruling in many years.
“If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits jailing citizens for engaging in political speech,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said in announcing the decision.
The law in question, enacted in 2002, prohibited advertising about candidates funded by corporations or labor unions in the days leading up to primaries and general elections.
A conservative nonprofit corporation, Citizens United, produced a documentary titled “Hillary: The Movie.” The 90-minute movie explored the myriad scandals involving Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. The movie was shown in theaters and sold as DVDs in 2008 while Hillary Clinton, then a U.S. senator and now the secretary of state, was running for president.
The trouble began when Citizens United sought to advertise the movie on television and distribute it through video-on-demand on cable TV.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the film was an “electioneering communication.” Under that designation, it became subject to the restrictive regulations set forth in McCain-Feingold.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court rightly disagreed with the District Court and ruled as unconstitutional the provision of the McCain-Feingold Act that prevented corporations and unions from spending freely from their own treasuries in the final days of political campaigns. Read the rest of this entry »
Federal Aid to Haiti Illegal
January 17th, 2010, 12:00 am by Thomas J. Lucente Jr.
By now, most of us have seen the devastation in Haiti. Sometimes, living in the modern world, with the technology to beam images of death and destruction in high-definition color right to our handheld devices, televisions and computer screens, is a curse.
However, as the latest natural disaster has proved, that curse is a two-edged sword. The very technology that is delivering pictures of the bodies in the streets and collapsed school buildings is also giving Americans the opportunity to assist those in the disaster area very quickly.
It is now possible to donate by sending a text message from a cellular phone. For example, to donate $10 to the Red Cross, just text the message “Haiti” to the number 90999.
Done.
What this shows is that Americans, as a whole, are a generous lot. Citizens have already donated millions of dollars to the relief effort.
That is how it is supposed to work.
Unfortunately, our politicians love to be generous with money that does not belong to them. President Barack Obama is no exception. He has pledged to give the stricken country at least $100 million.
However, he lacks the legal authority to do so.
I have thumbed through my well-worn copy of the U.S. Constitution (OK, it is no longer so well-worn as I have retired my pocket Constitution in favor of an electronic one on my Palm Pre) and I have been unable to place my finger on the exact section and paragraph that says the federal government can give money from the public treasury for acts of benevolence or philanthropy.
That is because it does not exist. Read the rest of this entry »
Obama Not To Be Believed On Health Care
January 12th, 2010, 12:00 am by Thomas J. Lucente Jr.
It seems nothing coming out of the White House can be trusted when it pertains to health care:
“I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We’ll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies - they’ll get a seat at the table, they just won’t be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process.” - President Barack Obama in August 2008
More accurately, as Charlie Crist put it last week:
“It seems that a bill that was crafted in a closed door, backroom meeting in the White House will end the same way. President [Barack] Obama has broken his pledge to the American people to be transparent throughout this process, and [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid and [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi have only aided in the secrecy with sweetheart deals and dead of the night votes.” - Charlie Crist, former Florida governor who is running for U.S. Senate, in a statement released Jan. 5.
According to PolitiFact.com:
“While the Senate and House floor debates have been televised on C-SPAN, negotiations have almost always been away from television cameras. …
“… Despite the action on the House and Senate floors, most of the serious negotiations on the health care bill have been done in the same fashion as other major initiatives in the past - behind closed doors. From negotiations with the drug companies and health care interests to final assembly of the delicate compromise on abortion, the bulk of the big deliberations and discussions have occurred out of the public eye.”
This is par for the course for Obama.
He recently made the claim that he did not campaign for a public option for health care, when it was clearly in his campaign literature that he wanted a public option.
Also, during the campaign, he said he was opposed to forcing people to buy health insurance. However, in 2009, when the health care debate began, he changed his mind and wanted to force people to buy insurance.
Nothing he says when it comes to health care can be trusted.
We’re the TSA and You Can Count on Us! (to overreact to tiny threats and ignore big ones)
January 11th, 2010, 12:00 am by Thomas J. Lucente Jr.
Another great video from my friends at Reason. This video is so true of the Transportation Security Administration but it is also, sadly, true of how the United States as a whole has been reacting to everything since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
When we resort to such Draconian measures, as we now have at airports, then the terrorists have won. They have succeeded in what they wanted to do, make Americans scared and cause us to lose our way of life.
With new TSA security measures in place it is now becoming faster and cheaper to drive farther distances rather than fly.
Bureaucratic nightmare on horizon
January 10th, 2010, 12:00 am by Thomas J. Lucente Jr.
Although a Canadian, Americans could learn much from the story of Coree Hanczyk.
Hanczyk is an example of everything that is wrong with government-run health care systems.
This is not your typical horror story about a person living in a country with socialized medicine and who dies while on a waiting list for a medical procedure Americans take for granted. While those things happen with alarming regularity under socialized medicine, they probably only affect a small percentage of the population.
No, Hanczyk’s story, while not as tragic, is more typical of what Americans should begin to expect when the federal government completes its unconstitutional seizure of our health care system.
Hanczyk is a 45-year-old flight attendant who lives outside Toronto. Canadian doctors found a tumor in her breast.
The problem arises, however, in determining whether chemotherapy is necessary.
When faced with small, estrogen-receptor-positive tumors, with lymph nodes free of cancer, chemotherapy is beneficial to only a few. The trick is in determining who they are.
While the tumors look the same under a microscope, a test - the Oncotype DX test - can determine if the cancer is likely to return within the next decade by analyzing 21 genes.
Without the test, women must make a choice: undergo chemotherapy, with its possible side effects of leukemia, neurological damage, infertility and premature menopause, or risk a recurrence in the next decade.
Herein lies the problem. Government bureaucracies move at a snail’s pace and are certainly ill-suited when it comes to working in the fast-paced world of personalized medicine. Read the rest of this entry »
Open Government … Democratic Style
January 9th, 2010, 12:00 am by Thomas J. Lucente Jr.
In a free society, government operates in the open. A transparent government is necessary if we are to maintain our liberties. The public’s right to know encourages integrity in official conduct and prevents undue influence from special interests.
It is telling then, that Democratic politicians are trying to craft the most pervasive and liberty-depriving bill in decades in secret. The Democrats are behaving not like representatives of the people but rather as despotic, penny-ante dictators. This is how an oligarchy behaves, not a representative republic.
Even despite public outrage at this behavior, they are staying the course and ignoring the will of the people. It is no wonder that the Congress has the lowest approval rating of any government agency in the country.
If this video does not anger you, then there is no hope for the republic.