Obama White House Should Read The Constitution

It is amazing to me that the White House can really think that Kagan is qualified to hear the ObamaCare case. Anyone with the smallest brain and a sense of fairness would realize that someone who was integrally involved in passing a bill should not judge the constitutionality of that law.  That is basic fairness, no less legaliity!

Is the White House so worried it will lose its singular accomplishment that it is willing

to violate the law? What do you think? Let us know at Conservative Musings.

Conservative Tom

 

White House: It's a 'Mystery' Why Anyone Would Question That Kagan Should Judge Obamacare

By Fred Lucas

November 28, 2011

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White House Press Secretary Jay Carney during his daily news briefing at the White House in Washington, Monday, March, 7, 2011. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

(CNSNews.com) – Although internal Justice Department e-mails released this year as a result of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits raise questions about whether Justice Elena Kagan should recuse herself from the Obamacare case pending before the Supreme Court, White House Press Secretary Carney indicated today that Kagan had asked and answered all questions relevant to recusal at her confirmation hearings in 2010.

Carney said that “it’s a mystery to me” why people would question whether Kagan should recuse. When pressed about the e-mails, Carney moved to a different topic.

When asked about news reports concerning whether Kagan should recuse from judging the challenge to Obamacare, Carney said on Monday, “These issues were raised, just a year ago, in an expansive confirmation hearing. And those questions were questions were asked and answered both in the hearing itself and in written questions that were responded to in writing. It’s a mystery to me how this can suddenly be an issue a year later and they want to revisit what they just visited not that long ago.”

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CNSNews.com then asked Carney, “Several e-mails have raised the issue on that?”

Carney responded, “Again, as I just said, all this stuff was examined, all of it was--questions were asked. She answered it and she responded in writing to this."

CNSNews.com further said, “But the information that recently came out was not available--”

Carney interrupted, “It sure sounds like a political thing to revisit it a year later.”

CNSNews.com followed up: “But the information in the e-mails was not available during the confirmation.”

Carney did not respond and moved to another topic.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) initially released 65 pages of internal emails relating to Kagan and the health care issue on March 15 in response to lawsuits filed under FOIA by the Media Research Center (the parent organization of CNSNews.com) and Judicial Wathc. This month, DOJ released three additional sets of emails in response to those suits.

In one of the newly released e-mails, Kagan expressed apparent enthusiasm for the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, i.e., Obamacare, in March 2010.

In response to a message at the time of Congress’ vote on the legislation from Harvard Law Prof. Laurence H. Tribe, Kagan, then the solicitor general of the United States, wrote: “I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing.”

A federal law, 28 USC 455, says that a justice must recuse in “any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” The law also says a justice must recuse anytime he has “expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy” while he “served in governmental employment.”

During her confirmation process, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee asked Kagan in writing if she had ever been asked or offered her opinion “regarding the underlying legal or constitutional issues related to any proposed health care legislation…or the underlying legal or constitutional issues related to potential litigation resulting from such legislation.” Kagan replied in writing, "No."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.), Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R.-Ariz.) Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Charles Grassley (R.-Iowa), and Sen. Mike Lee (R.-Ky.) recently sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to comply with requests made by Congress seeking information about Kagan’s possible involvement in health care legislation and litigation while she was serving as solicitor general.

“In January 2010--two months before then-General Kagan was even aware she was being considered as a potential nominee to the Supreme Court--your Department began planning to defend this law against legal challenges,” the Senate Republicans’ letter said. “Neil Katyal, Ms. Kagan's principal deputy, stated he would ‘speak with Elena’ about her office participating in a Department working group that would plan the Administration's litigation strategy, exclaiming that he wanted the Administration to ‘crush’ those challenging the [health care law].”

The initial release of e-mails made by the Justice Department in March in response to the FOIAs filed by CNSNews.com and Judicial Watch included a January 2010 exchange in which Kagan assigned her top deputy--who had indicated in another email that day that he wanted to “crush” legal challenges to Obamacare--to handle the expected health-care litigation.

It also included an e-mail exchange in which that top deputy notified Kagan on the Sunday that Obamacare was coming up for a vote in the House and that there was going to be a meeting at the White House the next day to plan for the expected litigation over the legislation. She e-mailed the deputy back asking for his phone number, which he promptly provided.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed by the House on Mar. 21, 2010 and signed into law by President Obama on Mar. 23, 2010.  Kagan was nominated by Obama for the Supreme Court on May 10, 2010

More On The Pending Disaster In Egypt

The more I read about the "elections" in Egypt, the more concerned I get. It is obvious that the majority of votes will go to the Muslim Brotherhood and those associated with them. OK, fine, it is a majority Muslim country and one would expect that. However, the direction and the instability caused by this move will have far reaching and destabilizing effects when it combines with the other countries that were part of the Arab Spring.

One can only suspect that in the capitols of the Arab world they are giddy with joy in seeing long term dictators (some were bastards but others were moderately progressive) overthrown by naive neophyte individuals who had no plan to govern after they accomplished their goals. Into this vacuum came the religious leaders, the mullahs, who by their position in life allowed them to present an answer to the leaderless masses who quickly gravitated to them.

We now have  religious leaders heading these movements and suddenly people are amazed they want to institute Sharia Law. Why should they be?  Religious leaders follow religious teachings, seems pretty simple to me. Muslims follow Sharia Law and the country is run by Muslim clergy.  This is exactly the same scenario that occurred in Iran.  Has there been improvement there over the Shah? Hardly!

Until our leaders and most Americans come to understand the danger from a world wide Muslim movement, we are going to see country after country fall under the rein of the clerics.  Will the US survive? Europe? It depends upon all of us gaining the wisdom to defend what we have. Sharia Law is not compatible with women's rights, gay and lesbian rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly and the Constitution. Until the world realizes this, all of our freedoms are in danger.

Are you willing to defend your rights? I am.

Here's more on the voting in Egypt.

Democracy Project Triumph: Islamists Surge Ahead in Egyptian Elections

Andrew C. McCarthy - National Review Online,  December 1st, 2011

It would be hard to overstate what a catastrophe the Egyptian elections are shaping into. Reports about stage one of the long process show not only that the Muslim Brotherhood may be getting over 50 percent of the vote; an even more extreme Islamist party — called “Nour” — is apparently getting between 10 and 15 percent.

In a bit of sleight-of-hand I’ve noted before, the media describes as “Salafists” the elements that are even more extreme Islamists than the MB. This is a device to help the Obama administration’s assiduous campaign to airbrush the Brotherhood into a “moderate” organization — one that National Intelligence Director James Clapper so memorably (and ludicrously) described as “largely secular.”

Do not be deceived. The MB is itself a Salafist organization. Salafism is a retro-refom movement that seeks to return Muslims to what is seen as the pure Islam of the founding generations (the Salafiyyah — the “righteous companions” of Mohammed). MB founder Hassan al-Banna was a Salafist. So was Sayyid Qutb — the most important MB theorist of the second half of the 20th Century. So is the MB’s leading sharia jurist in modern times, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi (despite efforts by his delusional Western fans to portray him as a modernizing reformer). The difference between MB Salafists and more extreme Salafists (like the difference between the MB and al-Qaeda) is much more about methodology than ideology). It is akin to the difference between Saul Alinksy organizers and the New Left radicals of the ’60s and ’70s. The MB has always believed in working with (and penetrating) government, and boring into society’s institutions, in order to Islamize society gradually. More extreme Salafists reject secular society and refuse to interact with its government — on the theory that such interaction corrupts them while legitimizing the secular government. But the goal of both sides is precisely the same: to install sharia law as the foundation for Islamizing the society.

The fact that Islamists even more extreme than the MB are not only participating but winning substantial seats in the election is a disaster on at least three counts. First, it demonstrates yet again the weakness of the secular democrats who have been portrayed, fraudulently, as the dynamic force of the “Arab Spring.” Second, it will push the dominant MB into an even more aggressively Islamist posture. Third, it will have the perverse effect of helping the Obama administration and Western Islamophiles continue to portray the MB as comparatively moderate. Of course, the Brothers are only ostensibly moderate in comparison to Nour (with whom they’ll be delighted to collaborate) — objectively speaking, they are virulently anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Israeli (indeed, anti-Semitic).

The Islamist ascendancy in Egypt, enabled by the West’s democracy fetishists and its Leftist allies of the MB, will have immediate disastrous consequences — in the imminent drafting of the new Egyptian constitution; in the eventual Egyptian presidential election next year; in overcoming the Egyptian military’s half-hearted attempts to stem the Islamist tide; in the deteriorating security of 8 million Coptic Christians (about 10 percent of the population); in a radically new and more threatening Islamist threat to Israel on a long border it has not had to worry about for the last 30 years; and in ensuring (in cahoots with Islamist Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, a longtime MB intimate) that the Brotherhood will take over Syria when Assad falls — probably sooner rather than later.

Who could have predicted such a grand jihad?

Zimbabwe Bashes Bernacke

Scary, that is the word I would use to describe the comments from Zimbabwe's Central Banker.  He wants to drop the U.S. dollar as the basis for their economy and move to the Chinese Yuan.  If this were to start occurring, it would not be long before the American buck would no longer be the currency of world trade.

Now, I know that you are thinking!  Why should we accept information from someone whose country experienced inflation of unheard of proportions?  My answer is, because they know the savages of inflation and the damage it can do.  They have seen the problems that result from runaway increases and can see the symptoms as they appear.

It is the same reason the police employ former thieves to warn people what thieves are looking for.  I would presume that Madoff has been quizzed by the regulators as to what they should do to prevent future Madoffs. Someone who has gone through the mill knows what it is like and for that reason only we should pay heed.

I read somewhere that the first breaks in a dam are microscopic. That would describe Zimbabwe. Are we going to ignore the warnings? I sure do hope not.

Here is more what the banker said:
Conservative Tom

Zimbabwe Bashes US Dollar, Alligns With Yuan

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/01/2011 15:02 -0500

• British Pound
 
• China
 
• Hyperinflation
 
• Monetary Policy
 
• recovery
 
• Reserve Currency
 
• Tim Geithner
 
• Yuan

It was three short years ago that the small former British colony of Zimbabwe was spewing forth 100 trillion dollar bills. Since then, courtesy of a few trillion extra percent of inflationary RDA, the country had given up on its currency and replaced it with US Dollars. Now, the country's cult central banker Gideon Gono has made it clear he wishes to avoid another episode of transplant currency hyperinflation courtesy of his counterpart in the Marriner Eccles building and "has warned that Zimbabwe’s nascent economic recovery is at the mercy of the United States dollar, which is facing new pressures from the Euro-zone debt crisis." Yet the screaming sarcasm is the following: "Gono says Zimbabwe should in fact be looking to the Chinese yuan as its main currency, while urgently seeking to restore its own currency which was abandoned in 2009 after a dramatic loss of its value. With the continuous firming of the Chinese yuan, the US dollar is fast ceasing to be the world's reserve currency and the Euro-Zone debt crisis has made things even worse." And the terminal slap in the face of all that is American: "As a country, we still have the opportunity to avoid being caught napping by adopting the Chinese yuan as part of consolidating the country's look East policy." Well, if recently hyperinflating Zimbabwe is complaining about the US as being on the same path as itself, and instead wants to become a Chinese FX vassal state, perhaps alarm bells should go off somewhere. So the next time Tim Geithner is up on stage somewhere, it may be prudent for a question to be be asked: how and why is it that the world's (formerly) de facto banana republic is complaining that the next up and coming B-Rep is about to replace it in the annals of idiotic monetary policy?

From New Zimbabwe:

Speaking in Gweru last Saturday, Gono said: “The extraordinary happenings in Europe where economic power houses in the Euro-zone have been hit by a debt crisis deserves extraordinary measures, especially here in Zimbabwe where we have adopted the U dollar as the major currency in our multi-currency regime.

China is now Zimbabwe’s biggest trading partner, with the Asian giant absorbing most of the country’s mineral and agricultural produce.

Vice President Joice Mujuru first raised the possibility of adopting the yuan in September last year, saying it would be a “logical step” and could help solve some of the country’s liquidity constraints.

The multiple currency regime announced in January 2009 has been fraught with difficulties. Retailers are supposed to accept the Euro and the British pound but those two currencies have never caught on, with most transactions being conducted in United States dollars, the South African rand and the Botswana pula.

Finance Minister Biti presented his 2012 budget last week and expects the multiple currency regime to remain in place at least until the end of 2012 when ministers hope it would be replaced by a single currency for the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC).

Gono, speaking at theConfederation of Zimbabwe Industries' (CZI) end-of-year business dinner, said the use of foreign currency was ultimately unsustainable in the long run.

“As long as we continue to use other people's currencies, where we do not have control over that currency, we are not going anywhere as a nation,” he said.

So all sarcasm aside, perhaps someone should be concerned that while the US is enjoying the third year of endless political bickering and deciding if this political candidate or that has had enough illicit sex, while rapidly losing all foreign influence, China is quietly but forcefully taking over the world precisely in the way that the US did in the 20th century: by becoming a primary trading partner, regionalizing its currency, and finally, a step that yet to occur, establishing CNY-denominated debt.

Does anyone still doubt what the endgame is?

Election Results in Egypt

As a follow up to our previous article, the article below gives more details on the elections in Egypt.  It is not a pretty sight.  By the way, with all the violations as outlined in the article, where is Jimmy "I hate Israel" Carter and all of his voter fraud detectors? Missing in action!!

Conservative Tom

Muslim Brotherhood Rising

Rick Moran - FrontPage Magazine,  December 1st, 2011

The Muslim Brotherhood​’s Freedom and Justice Party appeared to be a big winner in the first round of parliamentary elections held in Egypt on Monday and Tuesday. Early returns suggest the FJP captured as much as 40% of the vote with a surprisingly strong showing from the Salifist al-Nour party. The two Islamist parties together could very well make an absolute majority of 65% of the parliament, which means if voting continues along these lines during the rest of the complex process, it is likely that the first freely elected parliament in Egypt’s history will be run by radical Muslims.

The military congratulated itself on how smoothly the vote went despite apparent blatant electioneering at most polling sites by the Muslim Brotherhood and other parties, which is against the law. It hardly mattered since it was clear that the FJP was going to get a large plurality of the vote simply because it was the only party with any name recognition. As soon as it became apparent that the FJP was going to surpass pre-election expectations, the Muslim Brotherhood turned on its erstwhile allies on the military council, calling for an early transfer of power to civilian authorities.

Also accepting the results, albeit with fear and trepidation, were Egypt’s Coptic Christians who fear that an Islamist government will be even harsher than the current military regime has been.

As for the protestors in Tahrir Square, their credibility suffered a blow as the elections appeared to be conducted in a mostly fair and free manner. The National Democratic Institute, which oversaw the foreign observers who monitored the election, issued a statement praising the vote but suggesting that the blatant violations of election laws regarding campaigning at polling spots be better enforced. And while the young activists who brought down the Mubarak regime earlier in the year urged a boycott of the elections, authorities estimated that up to 70% of eligible voters in the 9 provinces that voted this week turned out to cast ballots. Two more rounds of elections in the other 18 provinces — 9 at a time – will be held in the coming weeks with runoff elections for candidates not receiving 50% of the vote held one week after the initial voting.

The complexity of the voting process played right into the hands of the FJP. Voters had to choose two individual candidates and one party list or their ballot would be invalidated. Because of its many decades of charity work with the Egyptian poor, the Brotherhood had a ready-made base of support which it capitalized on by setting up “information” booths right next to polling stations to help voters — many of whom were illiterate — in choosing who to cast their ballots for. The Associated Press described one such “information” center:

Outside polling stations around the country, Brotherhood activists were set up with laptop computers in booths, helping voters find their district and voter numbers —  which they wrote on cards advertising the party’s candidates. Elsewhere, they posted activists outside to wave banners, pass out flyers or simply chat up voters waiting in line.

For the illiterate, there were symbols next to which they could mark their ballot. And the FJP made sure that the voters knew which symbols stood for the Brotherhood candidates.

The confusion over who was running and what the parties stood for didn’t help the largest secular mix of parties, the Egyptian Bloc, which is composed of neo-liberal Free Egyptians; the socialist Gathering party; and the Egyptian Socialist Democrats. The better known but even smaller Wafd party, a Mubarak-era organization of liberals and academics, apparently didn’t have much of a showing either. Dr. Barry Rubin points out that the secularists wasted their energy in protesting military rule rather than organizing, uniting, and getting out the vote. Given the several decade head start in organizing that the Brotherhood enjoyed, they may not have won, but they certainly would have had a better showing and a chance for larger representation at the table when negotiations over forming the new government begin.

Besides patting themselves on the back for conducting the elections on time, the generals were expressing their pleasure at the size of the turnout. Major Gen. Mukhtar al-Mulla, a member of the ruling council, said the vote “responds to all those who were skeptical that elections will take place on time.” He added that the turnout was “unprecedented in the history of the Arab world’s parliamentary life.”

Perhaps the size of the turnout had something to do with the fine of 500 Egyptian pounds — around $85 — that the military will impose on those who did not cast their ballots.  In a country where nearly half the people earn less than a dollar a day, the fine may have convinced most of them to make it to the polls. In Alexandria, the Globe and Mail reports that people brought their elderly parents to the polls, standing in line with them so they could avoid paying the fine. “You think any of these candidates can change anything? Of course not. Ask anyone here – wouldn’t see these lines without the fine,” said one voter.

Now that the Brotherhood is on the cusp of seizing power, what is it exactly it wants to do with it? Prior to the vote, the Brotherhood backed the military’s position on the Tahrir Square protestors, withdrawing its supports of the latest demonstrations early on. It made a deal with the military to move up the presidential election from July of 2013 to July of 2012. The Brotherhood also negotiated the electoral process itself and steered clear of suggesting an early return to civilian rule.

But the coming electoral victory appears to have emboldened the Islamists. Despite what FJP leaders say was a “convergence” of interests with the military in the past, the party is now demanding the right to form a government without interference from the military, and subsequently choose a civilian cabinet. This almost certainly won’t sit well with the military council because it is likely that parliament would want to set up its own process for writing a new constitution — a deadly threat to the military, which has made it clear it will tolerate no scrutiny of its budget, no change in the economic advantages members hold, and will expect to have a strong voice in running the new parliament.

“The Brotherhood wants a strong parliament and the military council wants a weak one. The reason the Brotherhood fought for parliament is because they’re going to use it as an agent of change,” says Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. He adds that the path the FJP has chosen has put it on a collision course with the military.

That change is what has Egypt’s 10 million Coptic Christians so worried. Since Mubarak’s ouster, many violent incidents have taken place pitting extremist Muslims against the small Coptic communities. There have been murders of clergy, church burnings, oppression by local government officials, and just last month, a demonstration by Copts in Cairo that saw the military actually open fire on the demonstrators and run them over with armored personnel carriers. The violence has driven 100,000 Coptic families from the country with more leaving every month.

But the Copts have been in Egypt since the first century AD and most of them have no intention of leaving. Father Ishak, a priest at a Cairo church said, “We picked the Egyptian Bloc because it’s the most liberal group and because they are against religious parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood​.” He added, “And if elections are free and fair, it will mean that Copts are more clearly represented and be more active in building a new Egypt.”

The Brotherhood will probably move cautiously in fulfilling its Islamist agenda. The military is still very powerful and is opposed to the idea of Egypt becoming an Islamic state. To protect its position in Egyptian society, it might resort to armed force. This will make the FJP’s job doubly difficult because the party has promised free market reforms that would put a crimp in the military’s control of the economy. Rather than give the military an excuse to kick it out, it is more likely that the FJP will follow the example of the Turkish Justice and Development party that has gradually established control over the courts, the parliament, and finally the military since its victory in 2002.

A new day dawns in Egypt. Elections are a fine and wonderful thing, but elevating the Muslim Brotherhood to power, whose hatred of Israel and whose real agenda is undemocratic and injurious to personal freedom, will undoubtedly usher in a dark age after the dawn, which the Egyptian people will come to bitterly regret.

Egyptians Vote In Islamists and Sharia Law

For those who have believed the Arab Spring would result in new democracies across the Middle East, the vote in Egypt should squash those dreams.  With voting over and the military government postponing the formal announcement of result, it has been learned that over 70% of the votes went to pro-Islam and Sharia Law candidates. One group, it has been reported, received 48% of the nod.  This does not bode well for Europe, America or Israel.  Can the other participants in these uprisings vote any different?  We doubt it.

What does that mean for the non-Muslim world?  It is clear that Islam is coming on strong, that its plan to take over the world is taking hold and gaining momentum.  Their goal of regaining the power they had in earlier centuries, has not been accomplished yet, but has taken a foothold in the Middle East and soon will spread to Europe and Africa.

With Turkey moving away from a secular government to a religious Islamic one and the Egyptian vote should send alarm bells going in Tel Aviv and Washington. Those who had "hoped" for a democratic Egypt see those hopes dashed with the real possibility of a war even more imminent. What a victory it would be for the Muslim movement to see Israel destroyed! We pray that will not happen but these are the same dreams that the previous wars in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 were based.

Additionally, the movements around the world to de-legitimize Israel, to claim it is a pariah state, to punish it for "crimes against the Palestinians are all adding fuel to the fire that causes wars to be fought.   On top of that we see the decisions by the Obama Administration to separate the United States from support of Israel. And yesterday Iceland was the first country to recognize the Palestinians as a nation state. With all of this evidence, the Arabs see the best opportunity in decades to eliminate Israel.

The cherry on the top of the Arab pie, would be for Iran to get nuclear weapons. With those devices, Israel could be forced to do anything the Arabs wanted or risk annihilation.  Will Israeli leaders be strong enough to stand up to world condemnation and atomic bombs?  You tell me.  I do not know

The one thing I do know is, should the Israelis face this "Sword of Damocles" decision, the United States must side with them. However, if President Obama is President at that time, I doubt it would happen. As I have written before, I fear Israel will be left to fend for itself without support from the world.  Will it be successful, one would hope, but the Arabs have great military equipment and lots of manpower. This war will not be over quickly as Israel would fight to the last man not unlike those martyrs of Masada or Warsaw.

Your comments are welcome and ALL thoughtful, respectful discussions will be published, we promise!

Paul Attacks Gingrich And Scores Big

Want to see an attack ad against Gingrich that scores a homerun?  Click on the following link and tell us what you think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A3WQq_rDd8

More Evidence That Global Warming is a Farce

Ever since I heard the initial rumors of global warming, I was intrigued by it but was wondering where the evidence was. It did not make sense to me.  Every fact the "warmers" used, just brought more questions to mind of which I never got answers. 

Now with the announcement by Wikileaks that the global warming proponents were lying about the evidence and were manipulating the data to make it look like there was a problem. It became worse with the latest dump of emails.

The evidence of fraud should be enough to dump the enterprise and expose those participants to legal actions. 

The following article from National Review Online gives even more details.  What are your opinions?

Conservative Tom
Scientists Behaving Badly - More nails for the coffin of man-made global warming 
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE ^ | November 28, 2011 | Jim Lacey 
Posted on Mon Nov 28 2011 17:58:44 GMT-0500 (Eastern Standard Time) by neverdem
Scientists Behaving Badly
More nails for the coffin of man-made global warming

Global-warming skeptics spend much of their time knocking down the fatuous warmist claim that the science is settled. According to the warmists, this singular piece of settled science is attested to by hundreds or thousands of highly credentialed scientists. In truth, virtually the entire warmist edifice is built around a small, tightly knit coterie of persons (one hesitates to refer to folks with so little respect for the scientific method as scientists) willing to falsify data and manipulate findings; or, to put it bluntly, to lie in order to push a political agenda not supported by empirical evidence. This is what made the original release of the Climategate e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia so valuable. They clearly identified the politicized core of climate watchers who were driving the entire warmist agenda. Following in their footsteps are all the other scientists who built their own research on top of the fraudulent data produced by the warmist core.
Last week over 5,000 new e-mails, already dubbed Climategate 2, were released. Anyone still desiring to contest the assertion that only a few persons controlled the entire warmist agenda will be brought up short by this note from one warmist protesting that his opinions were not getting the hearing they deserved: “It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by a select core group.” Over the years this core group, led by Phil Jones at East Anglia and Michael Mann at Penn State, became so close that even those inclined toward more honest appraisals of the state of climate science were hesitant to rock the boat. As one warm-monger states: “I am not convinced that the ‘truth’ is always worth reaching if it is at the cost of damaged personal relationships.” Silly me, how many years have I wasted believing that the very point of science was to pursue the truth in the face of all obstacles. On the basis of this evidence the scientific method must be rewritten so as to state: “Science must be as objective as possible, unless it offends your friends.”
Unfortunately, from the very beginning, the core group at the heart of Climategate had no interest in “scientific truth.” As one states: “The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guide what’s included and what is left out.” In other words, let’s decide on a conclusion and then use only evidence that proves that point, discarding everything else. One scientist who seems to have been slightly troubled by these methods wrote: “I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it, which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.” In another note to Phil Jones, this same scientist complained: “Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest.”
Of course, nothing of the sort was done. As one e-mail states: “The figure you sent is very deceptive . . . there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change].” Too bad these so-called scientists felt they could tell the truth only to one another and not the public at large. Some of the other truths they shared only with one another are astounding. For instance, one writes: “I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of all present reconstructions, yet sounding like a pro greenhouse zealot here!” So, despite having no confidence in any of the models the IPCC was using in its reports, this scientist was ready to support the IPCC findings to the hilt. And why didn’t he believe the models? Easy: They were designed to tell the big lie. For example, when confronted with the problem that if all the data were included, the warming disappeared, Phil Jones turned to a novel method: He used only “[time] periods that showed warming.”
At one point, Jones admits that the “basic problem is that all of the models are wrong.” Of course, there is a simple reason for this. When the models do not show what the warmistswarmists resorted to changing the data.
The most efficient method of corrupting the models was to use data only from time periods when there was warming and discard others, as Jones admits to doing. This method helped one scientist reduce the cooling in the northern hemisphere between 1940 and 1970, so that he did not have to make up an excuse blaming it on sulphates, which could not be proven. Another complains that no matter how much he fiddles with the data, it is “very difficult to make the Medieval Warming Period go away.” Solving this problem in the modern era was much easier: The warmists merely changed the temperature readings for much of the 20th century and threw away the original data.
Why? One e-mail clearly explains what was at stake: ”I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their story. They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made to look foolish.” In other words, all the scientific lying was a result of scientists trying to give their political masters a major issue they could use to control people’s lives and justify wasting trillions of dollars. Success, as one warmist stated, rested on somehow convincing the public that “limate change is extremely complicated, BUT to accept the dominant view that people are affecting it, and that impacts produces risk that needs careful and urgent attention.” In other words, climate science is too complex for the simpleton voters, who must be made to believe that unless we wreck the global economy the planet will bake. As Michael Mann says in one e-mail: “the important thing is to make sure they’re losing the PR battle.” Moving even further away from their original calling as scientists, the warmists spend considerable time discussing the tactics of convincing the masses that global warming should be a major concern. For instance, one states: “Having established scale and urgency, the political challenge is then to turn this from an argument about the cost of cutting emissions — bad politics — to one about the value of a stable climate — much better politics. . . . the most valuable thing to do is to tell the story about abrupt change as vividly as possible.”
To win the public debate nothing was out of bounds. For instance, Mann, incensed that some skeptics had trashed his work, wrote to Jones, saying he had “been talking with folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose McIntyre . . . perhaps the same needs to be done with this Kennan guy . . . I believe that the only way to stop these people is by exposing them and discrediting them.” Steve McIntyre and Doug Kennan are well-known skeptics. In fact, McIntyre’s work was crucial in proving that Mann’s infamous “hockey stick graph” — the heart of the United Nations’ IPCC-3 report — was a fraud. Rather than contest McIntyre’s findings with evidence and data, Mann decided that his best alternative was to smear his challenger’s reputation. Skeptics always had to be on the watch for Mann’s spiteful attacks. But what is interesting is that many of his fellow warmists had a low opinion of his work. Despite this, they were slow to criticize Mann — partly because they did not want to give the skeptics any more ammunition, but also because they were afraid of him. As one warmist wrote to Jones, Mann was a “serious enemy” and “vindictive.”
Worried that their e-mail discussions might turn a spotlight on their fraud, Jones and others were constantly advising one another on how to hide the evidence. For instance, Jones once sent out an e-mail stating: “I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process.” To which one warmist replied: “Phil, thanks for your thoughts — guarantee there will be no dirty laundry in the open.”
Still, none of this deception would be possible without the active collusion of much of the global press, which has swallowed the warmist agenda hook, line, and sinker. As one BBC journalist wrote to Phil Jones after running a piece slightly skeptical of the warmist position:

I can well understand your unhappiness at our running the other piece. But we are constantly being savaged by the loonies for not giving them any coverage at all, especially as you say with the COP [Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol] in the offing, and being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them say something. I hope though that the weight of our coverage makes it clear that we think they are talking through their hats.

What is even more troubling is what appears to be the active collusion of government agencies charged with looking out for the public welfare. In one Jones e-mail, he discusses hiding data, making it clear that the U.S. Department of Energy was an active participant in his fraud: “Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get — and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (US Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.” I hope someone in Congress is interested in why the Department of Energy was involved in hiding climate data. One might assume that it would be harder to make an investment in Solyndra if the global-warming threat was proven a fraud.
My favorite quote of all those uncovered was from the climate criminal who asked his colleagues what would happen to them if it was discovered that climate change was “mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation,” as much of the evidence shows. He answers his own question: “They’ll kill us probably.”
— Jim Lacey is professor of strategic studies at the Marine Corps War College. He is the author of the recently released The First Clash and Keep from All Thoughtful Men. The opinions presented here are entirely his own and do not represent those of the Department of Defense or any of its members.

Israel At A Crossroads?

In the following article, Martin Sherman writes in the Jerusalem Post last week about the issues facing Israel.  And they are not pretty.  An out of touch left, incompetent right and a judicial system with minimum support. A very scary article. Let me know what you think?

Conservative Tom

Into the Fray: A nation betrayed?

Martin Sherman - The Jerusalem Post, November 18th, 2011

This is the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.
– Abba Eban on the Six Day War
The preceding citation, from arguably Israel’s most consummate diplomat, encapsulates the glaring irrationality and the inverted logic that has become the accepted hallmark of the politics of the Arab-Israeli conflict, both at the level of theoretical analysis and of practical policy-making.
The abandonment of any coherent, reasonable criteria has not been confined to the attitude of the Arabs towards Israel, but sadly has become a characteristic of Israeli policy towards the Arabs – and of a host of domestic issues that impinge directly and indirectly on that policy.
The absurd becomes routine
Consider the situation, which defies rational explanation, that is emerging today before our eyes, without evoking any significant expression of public incredulity — much less outrage — that such an astonishing development should warrant.
The ruling party of the day, the Likud, is, in effect, imploring the Palestinians to enter into negotiations over a resolution of the conflict on the basis of a principle — the Oslo two-state concept — that it itself rejected vehemently only a few years ago.
Mind you, this bizarre situation has not come about because this previously rejected principle has proved to be a stunning success. Quite the contrary, it has been shown to be an abject failure. After all, the endeavor to implement it has precipitated all the dangers its opponents warned of, and none of the benefits its proponents promised. Indeed, it has wrought death and destruction on Jew and Arab alike on a horrific scale.
Failures don’t come more abject or clear than that.
Yet almost inconceivably, just when it became undeniable that the opponents of territorial concessions and political appeasement were completely vindicated, they began to embrace the very policy they had previously repudiated.
These circumstances mirror almost exactly the inexplicable absurdity expressed in the Abba Eban citation above. Instead of the anti- Oslo victors in the ideological-political clash with their pro-Oslo advocates routing their vanquished adversaries, they set about surrendering to them.
Unwarranted intellectual surrender
This faint-hearted and feeble-minded conduct on the part of what is inappropriately dubbed — usually pejoratively — Israel’s political “Right,” constitutes unacceptable, unwarranted and irresponsible intellectual capitulation.
After all, the political doctrine of what is inappropriately dubbed — usually approvingly — Israel’s political “Left,” should have been consigned to utter and enduring disrepute. Every notion to which the Left has attempted to tether its political credo has come adrift. Every policy-relevant concept, every politically relevant personality on which it pinned its hopes has produced nothing but disaster and disappointment.
Indeed, the manifest folly of the Israeli Left and its preposterous brain-child, the Oslowian “peace process,” should have made it an object of enduring public ridicule. The manifest mendacity of its endeavor to promote it should have made it the object of ubiquitous public distrust.
Sadly however, the Israeli Right has done little to produce such an outcome. In fact it has done much to prevent it. For despite the fact the Left has little to justify its perennial claim to either the moral or the intellectual high ground, the Right has shown little stomach to challenge it.
A catalogue of blindness and blunder
This right-wing reticence is difficult to comprehend. After all, the list of the Left’s blunders is depressingly lengthy. It has been hopelessly wrong about… well, everything.
• It was wrong in embracing the homicidal Nobel peace laureate Yasser Arafat as a credible peace partner who could “deliver the goods.”
• It was wrong in pinning its hopes on Mahmoud Abbas, whose tailored suits and coiffured hair served as deceptively comforting contrasts to Arafat's belligerent keffiyeh and military fatigues.
• It was wrong in believing it could reach a lasting accord with the Palestinians by decoupling Fatah from Hamas and dealing only with the former while ignoring the latter — as both the expulsion of Fatah from Gaza and the recent unification moves prove.
• It was were wrong in portraying Salam Fayyad as a pivotal centerpiece for a durable peace accord — since recent developments demonstrated how precarious his position is.
• It was wrong in ignoring how imprudent it is to attempt to pursue an agreement based on a person-specific configuration of the Palestinian leadership which could be swiftly removed from power — by ballot or bullet — by a more inimical and radical successor – as in Gaza.
• It was wrong in heralding Bashar Assad as young Western-oriented, Internet-adept doctor whose accession to power would usher in an era of peace and progress that would allow Israel to relinquish the Golan.
• It was wrong in urging Israel to avail itself of the “good services” of the Islamist government of Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan as an “honest broker” to promote a deal with Damascus.
• It was wrong in insisting that an Israeli withdrawal to the internationally recognized borders would mollify Hezbollah and bring about peace with Lebanon.
• It was wrong in claiming that Israel could not attain economic prosperity without political peace with the Palestinians… as its current prosperity, even in an increasingly unprosperous world, clearly shows.
Yet in spite of this record of massive misjudgment, the leadership of the political Right persists in curiously misplaced deference to its ideological adversaries on the Left.
Perverting democracy
This deference was painfully evident in the Knesset this week, where issues that impinge on the nation’s ability to act assertively with regard to the Palestinians were raised.
The negative reaction of senior Likud ministers and MKs to the legislative initiatives aimed at addressing the problems of ideological bias in the nation’s judiciary and of foreign funding of inherently anti-Israel NGOs operating under the guise of “human rights,” are a disturbing reflection of the Right’s manifest sense of inferiority generated by the aggressive moralistic posturing of the Left.
While it might be possible to argue that the existing legislative proposals lack a measure of polish and refinement, it cannot be disputed that they raise issues of significance and urgency which must be confronted in the spirit — if not perhaps in the precise detail — set out in these bills.
Protection of the rights of minorities is one thing. Promotion of the ability of minorities to subvert the democratic process is quite another. There is nothing vaguely democratic about facilitating the imposition of minority views on the majority via extra-parliamentary action funded by foreign governments.
There is nothing vaguely undemocratic in a sovereign state instituting measures to limit — or at least monitor — attempts by alien sovereignties to empower fringe elements in the country, with negligible domestic support for their ideas, to subvert the policy of the government elected by universal suffrage.
Indeed, to abstain from doing so would be a dereliction of democratic duty. To advocate such abstention is to pervert, not preserve, democracy.
Judicial legitimacy and independence
The same is true with regard to the initiatives regarding the judiciary. While the independence of judiciary is indeed a matter of vital importance, it will be worth little if the public has no faith in the justice it dispenses. Indeed, the confidence the public has in the courts is no less — perhaps even more – important than their independence. For in the absence of such trust, justice will be sought elsewhere and by other means.
The plummeting degree of confidence the public has in the legal system is a clear warning that the status quo is unsustainable. According to one long-term study by the University of Haifa, barely one-third of the general public has faith in the system. According to Prof. Arye Rattner, who conducted the study, this ongoing 10-year decline in public faith in the courts “constitutes a grave blow to one of the most important foundations of the legal system in a democratic society – legitimacy.”
These words of warning echo precisely those of Prof. Ran Hirschl in his book Towards Juristocracy, which I cited in a recent column, “A real reason for revolution.”
In it Hirschl cautions: “Over the past decade, the public image of the SCI [Supreme Court of Israel] as an… impartial arbiter has been increasingly eroded… the court and its judges are increasingly viewed by a considerable portion of the Israeli public as pushing forward their own political agenda.”
It is thus a shame — or perhaps more precisely, shameful — that senior members of the coalition chose to abandon their parliamentary colleagues and endorsed the unfounded censure of them and their initiatives. A far better and more constructive course would be to join them in addressing any defects in their commendable proposals.
Israel has put its trust in leaders who have led it into great peril — and into those who so far have failed to lead it out of it. It has been placed in great danger by the injudicious action of the Left and the impotent inaction of the Right. The Left has imposed a fatally flawed paradigm on the nation; the Right has failed to formulate a persuasive alternative.
This situation cannot be allowed to continue. There is a potential for great tragedy brewing. Unless this pressing challenge is addressed rapidly and resolutely, all that might remain for future generations to do will be to assign blame for the fulfillment of that tragedy.