Useful Fools

From The New Atlantis (emphasis mine):

In Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), the Supreme Court held that marginal contributions to climate change, even if virtually imperceptible, were sufficient to establish legally cognizable injuries for the purposes of citizen suit standing. Under this reasoning, even marginal contributions to global climate change, such as those from a major transportation project or coal-fired power plant, would suffice to trigger consultation, if not actual emission limits under Section 7 of the ESA. So opponents of new projects could use the consultation process to bog them down, while defenders of the projects will be in an awkward position: It is one thing to argue that new projects may proceed, but much more difficult to argue that other agencies need not consult with the FWS to make sure.

Once again, Richard Nixon’s abominable Endangered Species Act is threatening our freedoms. The Fish and Wildlife Service has ruled the Polar Bear a “threatened” species (never mind that there is no valid science behind that - with or without global warming).

The current administration’s EPA claims no intent to regulate CO2… but…

Obama has packed his critical appointments in this area with environmental extremists and global warming alarmists.

So much for economic recovery!

President Klaus:

The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the end of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.

(Thanks Pajamas Media)

The history channel has a documentary purporting to teach the history and future of the current financial crisis: “Crash: The Next Great Depression?”

If you want to learn about the crisis, don’t watch this. If you are interested in studying propaganda, check it out.

The two most important factors that caused a normal bubble to mushroom into an international crisis are Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and the Community Reinvestment Act..

The first, treated as illegal gambling until Clinton signed a law deregulating them, were absolutely essential to sub-prime and “liar” loans. CDS’s allowed institutions with low grade loans to balance the risk - CDS’s are a form of insurance.

The second forced banks into loaning in slums (or face lawsuits from community activists), loans likely to fail. This is part of the reason that CDS’s were needed, and that mortgages had to be sold by the issuing institutions in complex derivatives.

Ultimately government pressure to create more and more home loans created a highly profitable business made possible with CDO’s and CDS’s.

The rest is history.

But don’t expect to learn any of this from the History Channel. Instead you can learn how Reagan was at fault, how Bush is like Hoover, and how Obama is like the sainted FDR. You can learn that the US is going to lose its place as the world’s financial leader (never mentioned: the problem is worse overseas).

All in all, a leftist screed.

Sad.

Many argue that our nation is morally bankrupt and a disgrace because we don’t afford the normal criminal protections to suspected terrorists captured overseas.

They fail to appreciate the unprecedented nature and gravity of the threat of terrorism in the modern age, especially ideological or theological terrorism such as radical Islamist.

Here’s why this threat is so special:

•  Al Qaeda is part of an international jihad, which has committed mass murder with the express intent of causing maximum damage to the United State.

• A fatwa was sought and issued, giving Al Qaeda the authority to kill millions of innocents to achieve their goals should provide additional concern.

• There are tens of thousands of nuclear weapons in the world, not all known to be accounted for, and that Al Qaeda is actively seeking them adds more ammunition.

• Unstable and rogue nations have sought (Iraq, Libya) and are actively progressing towards or possess (Iran, North Korea) nuclear weapons is ominous.More critically, all of those nations supported or directly engaged in terrorism. North Korean agents set off a bomb which almost killed the President of South Korea (a clear act of war). Iran has waged war against Israel via Hezbollah, and has frequently threatened the US. Iran has a leadership which may be religiously dedicated to causing a great holocaust in order to bring the 12th Imam. The (now defunct) regime of Iraq supported many terrorist organizations (not including Al Qaeda, although they had some links). We don’t know what other nations may have nuclear weapons - South Africa, during its transformation, gave up 8 nuclear weapons and a full biological weapons program.

•  Al Qaeda has the knowledge to create an easily smuggled nuclear weapon, and is missing ONLY highly enriched uranium, is certainly a threat.

• The fact that epidemiologists and other experts have stated that some pathogens could devastate our society, killing a large percentage, should be weighed in conjunction with Al Qaeda’s intention to use biological weapons. We recently captured Al Qaeda’s biological weapons head, a highly trained PhD specialist in those fields. Knowledge is the primary factor needed by a large terrorist group in order to weaponize certain pathogens - the costs and equipment for genetic engineering is following a Moore’s law curve. A $50,000 facility (assuming one isn’t scrupulous about accidental releases of pathogens) and a budget of a few thousand per month for supplies is sufficient. Many nations, including Iraq and South Africa, once had active biological weapons programs and could have supplied untraceable pathogens to terrorists speaks for itself.

• If MI5 hadn’t stopped them, Al Qaeda would have simultaneously destroyed up to a dozen jumbo jets over heavily populated US cities in August, 2006 should give pause. The casualties would have been significantly greater than 9-11. Note that the architect of that attack was killed last week by US forces, acting in a foreign country (Pakistan) with whom we are not at war, and acting in a covert-action rather than military way (An armed Predator is an assassin’s weapon in this circumstance).

• The fact that Al Qaeda is only the most visible of the Islamist terrorist threat should give pause, as should their viral recruitment techniques of people in Western countries.

Add it all up and you have a very significant threat. Not existential, but far beyond any criminal threat. From the US perspective, it is important to note that 9-11 killed more Americans in our territory than any attack by foreigners the history of our nation!

The threat of the deaths of tens of thousands (one nuke)  or tens of millions (one highly contagious weaponized pathogen) is  dramatic. The threat to our civil liberties and way of life, and especially to those who might be suspected of carrying out or intending to carry out terrorist acts, is huge. For example, we would end up in a much more intrusive surveillance state than is already growing.

Obama makes another great… appointment.

Eric Holder, acted irresponsibly at best in aiding in Bill Clinton’s inexcusable pardon of fugitive felon (illegal trading with Iran) Marc Rich.

It turns out he is also a gun grabber

Obama’s appointments are not looking so great.

Arizona governor Janet Napolitano is apparently going to be the next secretary of Homeland Security.

One would think that the head of DHS should at least know what the words “homeland” and “security” mean.

Residents of Arizona under Napolitano see high taxes, partly to pay for lots and lots of illegal aliens and their health care. We see Mexican gangs having machine gun fights in our streets, and human smugglers murdering each on a regular basis.

Obama should do better than this. This purely political appointment to such an important job is not a good omen.

We are not going to be secure in our homeland- even if Janet figures out what it means.

One the up side, Arizona gets a Republican governor as a result. On the downside, that governor inherits the second highest state budget deficit (percentage-wise) of any state in the nation and one of the highest tax rates.

Deborah Howell, the Washington Post media ombudsman, today wrote an article entitled “Remedying the Bias Perception”.

As you might expect from the title, it is about remedying perception, not bias.

Here is a my response=r:

Ms. Howell,

I just read your column “Remedying the Bias Perception.”

While you make some good points, you miss several things.

First, the title shows a misunderstanding of the problem. To any conservative who is aware of the issues, it isn’t a “Bias Perception,” it is bias. When the generally left-ish Saturday Night Live is running skits about the media being in the tank for Obama, it’s time to pay serious attention.

Second, you assert “The mainstream media were not to blame for John McCain’s loss; Barack Obama’s more effective campaign and the financial crisis were.” Let me phrase that slightly differently with the a reasonable hypothesis: “Without the bias and outright cheerleading of the media towards Obama, he would have lost the election.” Certainly Obama ran a good campaign, but one reason is that the media simply gave him a free pass. His record was not critically examined, his questionable associations were glossed over (Rev Wright is equivalent to McCain having dedicated his autobiography to a KKK member), his past work history was unexplored. If one compares this to the treatment of Sarah Palin or George Bush, the bias is off the scale.

From your article “Journalists bristle at the thought of their coverage being viewed as unfair or unbalanced; they believe that their decisions are journalistically reasonable and that their politics do not affect how they cover and display stories. ” The journalists described would seem to believe themselves superhuman. That somehow their training magically insulates them from those very strong human traits of bias. Is it any wonder that many of the public consider journalists to be arrogant elitists, and that the approval rating of journalists rests down there with lawyers and used car salesmen?

As a conservative, I consider our most formidable opponent to be mainstream media bias. It has tilted the playing field since at least the Tet offensive.

The media in countries like Britain and Mexico are more diverse than the media in the US, and that is a good thing - for those countries.

Give up on denying bias. Go back to the days when journalists accepted their bias and part of an outlet’s brand was its political leanings. The nation would be a better place for it.

……………

Many years ago, I started listening to Radio Moscow and Radio Havana (shortwave) and that led to my interest in propaganda and bias.

I can’t tell you how many times over the years I have seen consistent bias, both in the selection of narratives, and in the framing, by the MSM - especially the TV networks and NYT, followed closely by WaPo. The following paragraphs show some personal examples from 2004…

As a VIetnam vet, during 2004 I was involved in a national group that worked alongside the much-maligned “swiftboaters.” We had information that, had it been about Bush, would have led to a media firestorm and hoards of investigative reporters demanding and analyzing records and sources. That information was almost completely ignored. It was publicly available and could have been found by any reporter seriously interested in investigating John Kerry, but instead they were all looking for Bush’s National Guard attendance records.

One example is Kerry’s Navy discharge. It was uncritically reported by the Boston Globe that John Kerry received an early honorable discharge from the Navy in 1970. This is not true, and is trivially checked. Furthermore, anyone with knowledge of the military would have been very suspicious of that report, because the normal action (the actual case here) was early release from active duty. Kerry should have been discharged in 1972 (as I was). In fact, his records show he was discharged in 1978, with no time spent on duty since 1970. A reporter should have at least looked into this anomaly - what happened with John Kerry and the Navy from 1970 to 1978? Was his honorable discharge a result of the Carter Amnesty, as suspected by Carter-era JAG officers?

This also leads to the indisputable fact that John Kerry was a sworn US Navy Officer during his time of extreme anti-war activism, including his meeting, as an activist, with the enemy (North Vietnamese, Viet Cong) in Paris. This should have been news. I do not remember a single story about it.

These are examples that I find particularly convincing because of my own personal knowledge, and hence I am sharing them with you.

Thank you for your article

A group of lawyers and others are planning a shocking abuse of the US legal system in order to harrass and harm Bush and member of his administration, and others, for their actions in the “War on Terror”

The methods they advocate include widespread abuse of the system - abuse which would allow any group with support among some officials at various levels of government, and foreign governments, to persecute and harrass anyone in what can only be described as a fascist manner. Ironically, they claim to advocate the “rule of law.’ This is the “tyranny by law,” and would set a democracy-destroying precedent.

The proposals include:

• Impeachment of Bush and Cheney. If necessary, after they leave office!
• Impeachment of a federal judge for writing a memo that enabled “torture”
• Local, State, and federal prosecutions such as the Brattleboro, Vermont, ordinance that calls for the arrest on sight of Bush and/or Cheney…
• Charge Bush and Cheney with murder of U.S. soldiers who have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan war under state law.
• Use of common law courts … as a means to turn “revisionist international law theory” by asserting international humanitarian and human rights law violations as common law in state courts prosecutions.
• Having citizens file charges with the police in various countries
• Foreign and International Prosecution
• Complaints to licensing boards for professionals who assisted the government

[For a shorter analysis, click here.]

Forget bipartisanship. Forget the ability to protect our citizens from terrorists.

Some activists have revenge in mind… unprecedented attacks on former officials and citizens who assisted the government.

They plan to create a whole new legal minefield which can be used to hound anyone whom they dislike. Even if you think that Bush or someone should be prosecuted (which I find absurd), the tactics of these people should bring universal condemnation.

Some of these tactics can be easily used to effectively suppress dissent or otherwise leverage the personal power of activists in government positions to injure those with whom they disagree.

This effort is a neo-fascist attack on the rule of law and on our nation.

Oddly, professor Benjamin Davis argues strongly for the “rule of law.” It would appear he favors the tyranny of the law. The Soviets had the rule of law also.

From Benjamin Davis, Pitt Law Prof, excerpted, emphasis added, and fisked:

On September 13-14, 2008, over two hundred people from the United States and abroad gathered … for the … Conference on the Planning for Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals sponsored by the Massachusetts School of Law.

How many of our tax dollars went directly or indirectly to support this travesty? It was sponsored by a state university.

Impeachment of Bush-Cheney

… the impeachment … was very much on the table at the conference. In particular, it was noted that the time remaining for the Bush-Cheney administration is about the same time as it took for the impeachment of President Clinton. Moreover, the idea of a post-January 2009 impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney was raised so that they would be barred from any Federal office (such as work on federal commissions etc that prior-Presidents and Vice-Presidents have done) if the impeachment were successful. Beyond Bush and Cheney, a suggestion was made to impeach Judge Jay Bybee of the Ninth Circuit because of his enabling of torture in the now infamous Bybee-Yoo “torture memo.”

Impeachment? Didn’t we try that once before recently, with poor results? Impeachment after the officials are out of office? That seems blatantly unconstitutional, which is of course of no interest to these folks.

Local, state and federal criminal prosecution

Local efforts such as the Brattleboro, Vermont, ordinance that calls for the arrest on sight of Bush and/or Cheney…

So towns should now enforce “international law”? Applied broadly, this approach would create a minefield of the “United States”, making it the “Disunited Children,” where people would never be free to travel for fear their actions elsewhere - even across the world - could lead to their arrest and prosecution in some random little burg.

I’m sure the leftist elite would then have good reason to avoid “flyover country,” as their freedoms would be at risk, at least if I have any say!

… to charge Bush and Cheney with murder of U.S. soldiers who have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan war under state law. …A candidate for Attorney General in Vermont… if she were elected she would consider opening state murder prosecutions against Bush and Cheney.

State prosecution for the actions of federal officials? What next? Will Californians send commandos to France to bring Sarkozy back for prosecution on charges of political incorrectness?

One strategy … was having hundreds of local DA’s of the 2700 in the United States start those prosecutions in municipal courts.

This is a form of guerrilla lawfare against the US government. It is a form of illegal prosecutorial persecution of American citizens.

These state criminal prosecutions would put pressure or make it easier for a federal district attorney to … open federal criminal complaints against United States high-level civilians and/or generals for murder and torture and/or cruel inhuman or degrading treatment [and speaing with a Southern accent, etc]. … potential crimes [include] obstruction of justice, criminal use of classified documents, etc and the other crimes that typically catch high-level civilians was encouraged in an effort to find ways to vindicate international law rules through the domestic courts

In other words, this would not be a legal tactic, since the courts have no jurisdiction. Rather it would be a harrassment and agit-prop operation, conducted by officers of the court funded by the taxpayers.

. The use of common law courts … as a means to turn revisionist international law theory to the advantage of those seeking prosecution by asserting customary international humanitarian and human rights law violations as common law applicable in state courts prosecutions. The Federal Assimilated Crimes Acts could also make federal charges on customary international law grounds a possible avenue for criminal prosecution.

So now they will find a loophole through which international law can be used to prosecute US citizens by our own government!

Foreign and international prosecution

The participants analyzed the status of and possibilities for foreign prosecution of U.S. high-level civilians and/or generals in foreign domestic courts under universal jurisdiction…

Universal jurisdiction - does that include Cuba, Russia and Libya as the adjudicators? Universal, nonsense! This is a typical trans-national progressive folly.

…One of the more interesting tactics described started with over 200 citizens going to their local police stations in England and reporting a crime had been committed - referring to the Iraq War or torture. The police have a duty to investigate and this is a manner in which the ordinary citizen in England could get the wheels of justice rolling.

As to international prosecution, the participants discussed the possibility of referrals to the International Criminal Court of United States high-level civilians and/or generals based on crimes committed in countries which adhere to the ICC. It was noted that prosecutors in a number of foreign countries have based their politically motivated dismissals of complaints against high US officials on the mistaken notion that the accused would be prosecuted in the US (the principle of complementarity) as well as on incorrect theories of immunity. The view discussed at the conference was that domestic U.S. efforts and foreign and/or international efforts for criminal prosecution should go forward at the same time so as each can help the other advance as fast as practicable.

Right… use that same tranzi ICC against our officials. This should make anyone nervous.

State licensing complaints

Complaints to state licensing authorities for psychologists and lawyers were examined as a means to sanction those who are considered to have broken the law and betrayed their professional oaths.

…Just in case anyone would be tempted to help their government in the future!

Political will for prosecution

Many people were shocked by the tactics used by police against demonstrators at the Denver and St. Paul political conventions. It appears that room for dissent in the United States has been significantly narrowed. Notwithstanding this state of affairs, ideas for action to build the political will for criminal prosecution of American war criminals abounded. A march of lawyers on the Justice Department - taking inspiration from the lawyers in Pakistan - was suggested to assert the need to take back the Justice Department and have it now enforce the law instead of flout it. Creative methods of demonstrations by diverse groups to encourage criminal prosecution were discussed. T-shirt campaigns, support of local and national candidates, a plethora of ideas blossomed in the discussions.

Does this sound like the ’60s leftists? Only the paranoid or historically challenged can believe that “room for dissent” in the US has been “significantly narrowed.”

And note the implicit equivalence of the US and Pakistan.

To help in thinking about 17 specific directions in which efforts could go, it was proposed that a Central Committee be created to try to coordinate the diverse activities related to developing more political will and developing the criminal prosecutions. Participants at the conference are reaching out to persons and organizations who have been fighting to support the rule of law the past eight years in civil cases or in political action, in order to help all aspects of the effort to criminally prosecute these high-level civilians and generals. The Central Committee has already held its first telephone conference and links are being developed with all organizations and persons of goodwill who will support this effort.

While many thought that prosecutions would now have to wait until the next administration, none thought that a future Republican of Democratic Administration could be counted on to pursue criminal prosecution. The need for citizens to take up the call and pressure the powers at the local, state and national level to take up criminal prosecution and/or impeachment was acutely felt.

Here it is again. Old fashioned leftist thinking and tactics. The 60’s live again. I’ll bet these radicals imagine themselves as carrying the mantle of the civil rights movements. In fact, they are staining it.

It became abundantly clear to all present that “the whole world is watching” efforts in the United States to bring U.S. high-level civilians and/or generals to justice through criminal prosecution. These ordinary citizens appeared willing to take up the challenge - even if it takes years - of building the political will and getting the successful prosecutions completed. We must remember that there is no statute of limitations for murder and for many international crimes. Rather than despair, the participants recognized that they need to be determined, disciplined, and prepared to deal with agents provocateurs used by brilliant adversaries in this effort.

Yes, we must destroy our country in order to save it’s image! Right.

Woody, at GMRoper’s blog, found a document that cuts through the details on “global warming” and lays out the skeptics’ argument very well. I highly recommend it (and GM’s blog).