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You are defending a fucking racist.

Oh, am I defending Obama? After all, he's the one who took a smiling photo with the notorious racist hate preacher Farrakhan, and also worked with his Nation of Islam organization in the past. As have the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including top-level Democrat Keith Ellison. Odd how the national media is silent on that.

You even bring out Obama as a strawman

Obama wasn't the strawman. He was the subject. It was Obama's defenders that tried to bring in a strawman version of Duke to say that Farrakhan wasn't all that bad. All I did was show the true record.

And you wonder why we call people like you racist, because your are actively saying that an x KKK member, is a good person, because he didn't commit violence that you know of?

Aaaand here's the strawman. I never said Duke was a "good person". You conveniently forget that I equated him with Farrakhan, and I hold both in equal contempt. You also pass over the fact that Byrd was a lifelong Democrat who also had a past history of the Klan, but was allowed to escape his past and was lauded.

operate for a long time undiscovered

It wasn't undiscovered. It was an open secret.

In other words, he was pushed out in line with their morals and prinicples, but this behavior ultimately benefitted democrats so it doesn't count?

Why do you strawman instead of tackling the issue? You ignored the initial pushback. You ignored the context in which he was finally pushed out. It wasn't about morals, it was about what was politically expedient.

How is that an example of hypocrisy or tribalism? Trump [..]

What does Trump have to do with the behavior of the Democrats? Not only does Ellison have multiple accusations by women against him, he's also been associated with the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan and an apologist for cop killers.

So? He's a fugitive hiding from US law enforcement. Hollywood nutballs aren't politicians.

But they are liberals.

I haven't heard of this. Is this what you're talking about?

No, I'm talking about this.

How is this relevant? Should adulterers be treated the same as rapists and misogynists?

You know Good Ole' Bubba has been accused of rape, as well as being a serial sexual harasser of women, right?

your_credibility--

Oh really?

"Jeong is a great hire for the Times but her tweets appeared to be blatantly racist, whatever their intention."

Hey, look at those great standards! What morals! What adherence to principles:

"Oh man itâ(TM)s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men" --Sarah Jeong

"#CancelWhitePeople" --Sarah Jeong

"Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins?" --Sarah Jeong

Whew, that's pretty spicy! I see why she was a great hire for the New York Times.

No, no one was indicted under 52 U.S.C. 30121, which covers “meddling” in U.S. elections by foreign nationals.

I predict the case about the Russians won't go to trial. It's an easy prediction because 97% of Federal charges are plea bargained.

They weren't even charged with "meddling" in the US Election(52 U.S.C. 30121), they were charged with conspiracy to defraud the US (18 U.S.C. 371) and some paperwork fraud. The feds will be eager to avoid a trial on the conspiracy to defraud charge because its weak. The defendants will plead to the paperwork stuff because that's easy to prove.

Facebook likes to pretend to do the right thing while always seeming to find a bunch of new wrong things to do instead. No doubt the next election will have similar ads with funding sources disguised enough to provide Facebook with deniability. The press won't care unless their candidate loses again.

Someone has no idea what the news actually means!

What is so very puzzling to me is why you think candidates should not be able to talk to foreign governments, at all? I mean, what do you think every candidate since ever has done about foreign policy before they were elected?

It seems like you would all get tired of thinking you are going to impeach trump when all you have done is shot another gaping hole in your own foot.

I’m actually not even sympathetic b/c country music fans are often Republican gun toters.

Sorry bro. Your kumbaya fantasy world isn't viable. Daily we're presented with undeniable evidence of the contempt and disdain the powers the be and all their left wing sycophants have nurtured in their hate filled hearts.

Headline from yesterday: Decades of Sexual Harassment Accusations Against Harvey Weinstein

And how does he play it?

I've decided I'm going to give the NRA my full attention. I hope Wayne LaPierre will enjoy his retirement party.

Left wing shitheels coming at us one way or another Every. Single. Day.

So no, if we hadn't already picked a side we're left with no choice but to get on one;

This is all about money, always has been, always will be.

"To perform these [Studies of the modern carbon cycle] tasks, the project expects to need significant resources. Specifically, studies of the modern carbon cycle will require about 15 teams devoted to laboratory and field investigations. Analyses of past events will require about another 15 teams for sample acquisition and geochemical analyses. New theory and related modeling to motivate and support the entire effort will require an additional 10 teams. An average of $2.5M/year for each team would result in a $1B, ten-year project. The outcome would be a fundamental understanding of carbon cycle dynamics, revolutionizing earth and environmental science and resulting in a comprehensive, objective evaluation of the long-term risks of modern environmental change. This is necessarily an extraordinary opportunity for enlightened philanthropy, since a project of this scope could not be funded from public resources." from http://www.sciencephilanthropy...

The kooky AGW nuts in the govt/IPCC with their "forcing/feedback" algorithms off by an order of magnitude are doing the same thing. They want giant sums of money, all the while they (NCDC) are manipulating the weather records in HCN, or making bogus studies based on badly situated weather stations situated next to a heat sink. Next thing you know, we'll see one of these weather stations placed next to a nuclear reactor to cook the books further

(If you don't like waiting years, then let's look at previous testable predictions and see how well they held up. Anyone have a list of testable predictions?)

Here's one. I cribbed the following from PowerLine.

Nature Geoscience ponders the problem of why observed temperatures in the troposphere are not matching up with what the climate models have predicted. The lead author, Ben Santer, is one of the leading climatistas, so this article can’t be written off as “denier” distortions. (One of the co-authors is Michael Mann.)

Link to the paper is here.
I'm willing to bet there will not be a /. story about this one.

And again, you're spewing lies that have been proven to be lies over and over again. Many studies have shown that there's very little to no election fraud that could be "fixed" by voter ID laws. There's real, actual election manipulation by people (Republicans) trying to prevent people from voting legally.

Rubbish. Election fraud is an ongoing problem.

A SAMPLING OF ELECTION FRAUD CASES FROM ACROSS THE COUNTRY (pdf - open in new window)

Americans had Obamacare inflicted on them as due to election fraud resulting in the "election" of Senator Al Franken:

Rampant Voter Fraud Alleged In Minnesota

This fact is particularly explosive:

MVA found 941 ineligible felons who were allowed to vote in 2008 alone, exceeding the 312 vote margin separating DFL candidate Al Franken and GOP Sen. Norm Coleman after a grueling recount.

This is stunning. It was Franken’s razor-thin “victory” over incumbent Senator Norm Coleman that allowed the Democrats to ram Obamacare down the throats of the American people. If we assume that 80% of the 941 ineligible felons voted for Al Franken–a conservative assumption, as nearly all convicted felons are Democrats–then Franken’s victory is attributable to voter fraud. And the 941 ineligible votes are just a fraction of those that could have been identified if the Democratic Secretary of State had not stonewalled, refusing to turn over the full list of ineligible voters.

Poor and Disadvantaged are Most Likely to Have Their Vote Stolen

Someone ought to write a book. Oh, hey! Look at that! -- Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy

Amid Voter ID Battles, Here Are 7 Things the Government Requires IDs For

As federal courts wrestle with voter ID laws in several states just months before a national election, there is considerably less attention being brought to other constitutional rights that require ID.

Do you not care about citizens being able to exercise their rights other than voting?

There has been way more than a few dozen cases of election fraud.

There were as more than 1,000 cases in just Minnesota in 2008. It is practically certain that fraud tipped the election and provided the path to Obamacare.

Can we care about troubling issues regarding abortions even if they aren't 9th month abortions?

More Black Babies Aborted than Born in New York City

The people of the United States made the best choice for president of the choices available.

You just elected a Russian mole.

Sure. Because Kremlin says so... Except, they don't even claim that... It is all a product of hypotheses, suggestions, and unsubstantiated — usually anonymous — claims.

Meanwhile, a few facts about Clinton's recent past:

• In 2010 abolished the anti-Russia sanctions imposed over their invasion of Georgia in 2008 — thus, predictably, inviting them into Ukraine (and, correspondingly, to Syria).
• Criticized and mocked, along with other "Progressives", the very notion, that Russia may be hostile to the United States.
• "Reset".
• Routed billions of dollars worth of American investments into Russia's high tech — some of it with military purpose — while rewarding herself in the process.
• Has a history of taking bribes from Putin with who knows what other things remaining up his sleeve with which to blackmail her.

The only thing, that can be done to address the above accusations by your kind is down-modding them — facts are stubborn. So, apply some Vaseline, charge your Prius and head for Canada as you promised.

The Beautiful Wickedness finally had some water splashed on her, and us, the deplorable munchkins, are rejoicing.

Then LBJ got the Civil Rights Act passed, and enforced it, which caused the racists in the deep south to switch to the Republican party... but the racists remained in control.

False.

The “Southern Strategy” Debunked Again

You should think about it - LBJ got the Civil Right Act passed with the help of the people that had passed the previous ones - the Republicans. The people that tried to block it were Democrats. What sense would it make for racists Democrats to bolt for the party that had been mainly responsible for passing civil rights legislation for a century? You've fallen for a narrative, not history.

The Party of Civil Rights

Also, this makes for an interesting wild card:

Is it prohibited to draw majority-minority districts?

No. Over 30 years ago the Supreme Court held that jurisdictions are free to draw majority-minority election districts that follow traditional, non-racial districting considerations, such as geographic compactness and keeping communities of interest together. Later Supreme Court decisions have held that drawing majority-minority districts may be required to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act.

In a closely divided nation it doesn't have to be common to be effective. At the right place and right time a few hundred votes out of millions can tip the fate of an election, create a majority, and suddenly 16% of your economy is under government control, along with major taxes and the result is the big problems now seen in the US.

Rampant Voter Fraud Alleged In Minnesota

Of course you stand with the faction engaging in fraud, and like the outcome, so we have that.

Voter fraud is extremely rare, and the courts are enforcing federal law that makes sure people like you can't use it for cover to disenfranchise minorities.

Election fraud is a continuing problem across the US.

And you seem to have the issue of disenfranchisement backwards:

Victims of Voter Fraud: Poor and Disadvantaged are Most Likely to Have Their Vote Stolen

The Virginia scandal comes close on the heels of the voter fraud trials in upstate New York, where Democratic county elections officers and city councilmen from the town of Troy stand trial for absentee-ballot fraud. Four Democrats have already pleaded guilty in a case that highlights who the real victims of election fraud usually are: the poor, minorities, the sick, the old, and other vulnerable members of society.

Democratic Committeeman Anthony DeFiglio pleaded guilty to falsifying business records in the case, and he told investigators that "The people who are targeted [in voter fraud cases] live in low-income housing and there is a sense that they are a lot less likely to ask any questions." Even more disturbing was his admission that "What appears as a huge conspiracy to nonpolitical persons is really a normal political tactic."4

Another Troy Committeeman, Anthony Renna, admitted to forging absentee ballot applications and explained that handing in forged ballots and fake votes ensures that "ballots are voted correctly."

"I knew that the actual voters had not voted the ballots or signed the envelopes, but that did not concern me. I am not the ballot police," Renna told police. "I have been present when 'ballots were voted correctly' by party operatives."5 "Voted correctly" is fraud-speak for a forged application or ballot and it has nothing to do with the intentions of the lawful voter and everything to do with the interests of criminals who flagrantly violate election laws.

And who were the victims of this crime against the public? According to the Times Union, those disenfranchised Troy voters who had their ballots voted for them "correctly" included "public housing residents, college students, the semi-literate, a deaf man, the chronically ill and non-English speakers."6

Lest we think that this sort of thing only happens on the east coast, we should remember the illegal ballots cast by an estimated 5,000 non-citizens in Colorado's elections in 2010. Colorado's Secretary of State reported that a state study found nearly 12,000 people registered to vote in Colorado who were not citizens and were therefore not legally eligible to vote. Of those, the state believes that perhaps as many as 5,000 voted in the 2010 general election.7

People in the US have a constitutional right to travel, but you can't board an aircraft and even buses without an ID. You can't enter many government buildings without and ID. You can't open a bank account or cash a check of any real size without an ID. You may not be able to buy alcohol without an ID. What are the activists doing there? Nothing. Why do you think they only care about voting? Here's a hint:

Project Veritas, part two: Dem activists discuss best practices in committing voter fraud without getting caught
"Rigging Elections For 50 Years" - Massive Voter Fraud Exposed By Project Veritas Part 2

The US has had the twin ravages of Obamacare and Senator Al Franken inflicted upon it due to election fraud.

Rampant Voter Fraud A

Putin wants Trump to be president.

Pathetic... Seriously... Are we supposed to believe, Trump will be better for Russia, than the alternative, who:

• In 2010 abolished the anti-Russia sanctions imposed over their invasion of Georgia in 2008 — thus, predictably, inviting them into Ukraine.
• Criticized and mocked, along with other "Progressives", the very notion, that Russia may be hostile to the United States.
• "Reset"
• Routed billions of dollars worth of American investments into Russia's high tech — some of it with military purpose — while rewarding herself in the process.
• Has a history of taking bribes from Putin with who knows what other things remaining up his sleeve with which to blackmail her.

You expect us to ignore all of the above and worry ourselves over "irregular pings" of a server with "Trump's name in it" originating from a Moscow bank?

I seriously hope you're not considering voting for the candidate whose campaign manager worked for Yanukovitch, whose foreign policy advisor actively works for Gazprom

I'd rather Trump wins, than Clinton, who:

1. ran State, when the Administration ended all "Georgian" sanctions against Russia, thus inviting Putin into Ukraine as predicted
2. received, along with her husband, countless bribes (that is, "speech fees") from Putin-controlled entities — and gave amply in return
3. routed billions-worth of investment into Russia's high-tech and -technology firms, some of them, obviously, with military connections
4. was part of the Administration, that still would not give Ukraine lethal weapons (such as anti-tank missiles they desperately need) to counter the threat of Russia's armor
5. Continues to employ John Podesta, who received millions from Putin too — and, unlike Manafort, Podesta is not simply a cold professional campaigner one day in Peru, tomorrow in Israel, and so on, he is sincerely behind Clinton and Democrats.

Unlike USSR before him, Putin courts all sides. I'll take my chances with Trump, who has no prior record of helping the asshole and is less likely to be blackmailed by him.

Pretty much everyone I know that's GOP-leaning and not a nutjob seems to simply disregard the "Crazy GOP" faction and act as if they're not relevant to the conversation.

Because they aren't. The 'nuts' on the right are a small minority. The only ones pay attention to them are the media, who take any opportunity to try to paint everyone on the right with the same brush.

As opposed to those one the left, whose nuts, also a small minority are help up as leaders and push the left more and more toward authoritarianism.

As for the 'Southern Strategy' you can peddle that lie all you want, but it still won't be true. Democrats were the party of the KKK. The south as race became less and less of a focus, grew more and more Republican. There was no giant sweep, just a steady drift away from the race obsessed Democrats.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/a...
http://townhall.com/columnists...

This is a sympathetic article designed to sow confusion about this stuff. The article made the true but irrelevant statement that of a recent batch of emails not many were classified and those not Top Secret; it repeated Hillary Clinton's assertion that nothing she sent or received was marked classified, without discussing what is questionable about that assertion; it didn't mention how many Top Secret emails were found, didn't mention the satellite data or the discussion of the names of spies, and didn't mention that about 7% of all the emails were classified at some level. It also didn't mention that the State Department offered a Blackberry and Huma Abedin said that idea "doesn't make a whole lot of sense." But the article did spend several paragraphs talking about how well she is doing in the primaries.

Problems with Hillary Clinton's claims that no material was marked classified:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/8/28/1416309/-Hillary-Clinton-s-Felony-The-federal-laws-violated-by-the-private-server
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/02/09/judicial-watch-hillary-e-mailed-classified-info-to-get-printout-without-any-identifiers/
http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/19/politics/hillary-clinton-emails-server-classified-ig-report/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-on-her-private-server-wrote-104-emails-the-government-says-are-classified/2016/03/05/11e2ee06-dbd6-11e5-81ae-7491b9b9e7df_story.html

Names of spies discussed in insecure email, lives probably lost:
http://observer.com/2016/02/breaking-hillary-clinton-put-spies-lives-at-risk/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3413033/Hillary-s-emails-contained-classified-information-HUMAN-SPYING-State-Department-says-won-t-meet-deadline-publish-emails.html

Satellite data discussed in emails:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3196774/Hillary-s-emails-contained-secret-CIA-intelligence-satellite-info-panic-hits-Democrats-campaign-issues-4-000-word-explanation-s-innocent.html

7% of emails classified... 2079 out of about 30,000:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/02/new-email-release-brings-final-total-of-classified-clinton-emails-to-2079.php

"doesn't make a whole lot of sense":
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/01/18/state-to-huma-in-2011-your-boss-better-get-an-official-e-mail-account/

P.S. So Hillary Clinton wanted a mobile device that could be used for secure communications, and was told "nope, that's not secure, you can visit the SCIF just like everyone else has to do." So naturally she just used her own insecure server to send and receive classified information, so she could use her mobile device. Great.

If President Obama doesn't pardon Hillary Clinton, she will have problems fr

If you bothered to read the post there is an argument being made there, and a credible one. It is consistent with reporting on the post-incident damage investigation and remedial action in other national security incidents. The lawyers that write at powerlineblog are knowledgeable and tend to make informed and thoughtful arguments. They are credible, your opinion not withstanding.

The really awful thing about Clinton storing all kinds of classified data on her server is not just that some of it may have been stolen...

Np, the far worse problem is that because she wiped the server, the intelligence community now has now way to know exactly WHAT information may have been leaked, and (again because the server was wiped) no way to have a good idea of the probability of it having been hacked or not - meaning anything she or anyone she worked with had access too, has all got to be considered compromised now.

More details here...

I'm not sure the data is valid anyway. I sure would like the explanation to this: http://www.powerlineblog.com/a... since we have some of the older data- and it doesn't match the "released" data - what happened?

.... the Obama administration doesn't seem to have much interest in extraditing him (and executing him (as the conspiracy theory goes)). A future Hillary Clinton administration, on the other hand, ....

Why Clinton Cash Has Bi-Partisan And National Importance

Since 2001, the Clinton Foundation has amassed a staggering $2 billion, mostly in chunks from globally powerful individuals, multinational companies and foreign countries.

“Clinton Cash”: Disputations

House of the Stackd Deck of Cards

No-one could possibly be manipulating CO2 data as well could they?

http://www.powerlineblog.com/a...

The AMS (American Meteorology Society) is concerned about a possible witch hunt. They feel that peer-review is the best way to uncover issues with the research.

Nice trick - pretend you have 98% consensus in order to proclaim all who disagree with you as quacks - all while neglecting to say of course what exactly constitutes "agree"...

Then when you disagree with anyone in particular who was in the original grouping, you can claim they were part of the wacky 2%.

When you have people disagreeing with your position on the level of Dyson, you really need to re-think how grounded your position truly is, as opposed to "consensus through fear and intimidation".

Oh, and Soon being paid for by Koch? That was in studies long ago, not even the current study in question... but there's another fact you'd hate for people to know, because it means that you are lying when you claim the study you don't like is funded by Koch.

All that matters of course is you discredit anyone who disagrees with you, just like the Scientologists. We all know how trustworthy they are. If I were you I'd think much harder about the intellectual company I keep.

funny, since the only ones ever brought up are the koch brothers

but the dems are just as good at spending the money, and simply better at acting like they are not taking money from the big donors But if you like, id love to add another name to the soros' of the world. Tom Steyer who has spend over 50 million of his own money on democratic candidates recently - http://www.powerlineblog.com/a...

but no, the republicans are the part of the big evil rich....

I swear, if Soros didn't exist they'd have to invent someone like him.

And the same thing goes of Koch. I think it's funny that you mentally are so retarded by hate at this point you just say "they" and some everyone knows the Evil that you speak of.

The thing is, most of the evils accorded to Koch are i fact invented...

Thanks for reminding me to point that out.

Billionaire hedge fund operator and “green” energy magnate Tom Steyer has pledged $100 million in the 2014 election cycle to help Democratic candidates who oppose the Keystone pipeline and who favor “green” energy over fossil fuels. Steyer claims to be a man of principle who has no financial interest in the causes he supports, but acts only for the public good. That is a ridiculous claim: Steyer is the ultimate rent-seeker who depends on government connections to produce subsidies and mandates that make his “green” energy investments profitable. He also is, or was until recently, a major investor in Kinder Morgan, which is building a competitor to the Keystone pipeline. Go here, here, here, here, here and here for more information about how Steyer uses his political donations and consequent connections to enhance his already vast fortune.

the composition and political thrust of the parties changed dramatically with the Republican southern strategy of the 60s

Let me put you some f'in knowledge.

And more.

And even more.

On top of that, how do you explain the Democrats' only really starting to lose their stranglehold on southern-state governorships and legislatures in the '90s and later?

Hilarious!

Government, Not Globalization, Destroyed Detroit

How the Democrats Destroyed Detroit

How Coleman Young Ruined Detroit

With Detroit bankrupt, is 'blue model' to blame?

Yep, next thing you know Democrats will again be trying to get into our bedrooms.

California Legislators Want to Tell College Kids When to Have Sex

Do you mean that making a graph using a temperature proxy measurement, tree rings, then switching to recorded temperatures only at the point they diverge rapidly, without mentioning this change, is proper?

Is it also proper to use one specific type of tree as the basis of the graph, if that one type is the least likely to show historic temperature changes? Wouldn't it be better to use results from trees that more accurately show historic temperature changes?

Mann's hockey stick wasn't to show that we are warming in the last 100 years. We all know the global temperature has warmed in the last century or so. That isn't in dispute. Mann's chart was specifically meant to eradicate the Medieval Warm Period, followed by the Little Ice Age. It was meant to prove that before we released vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, the temperature was static for a millennium.

And it was all a sham.

But now a shock: Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.

But it wasnt so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.

Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!

http://www.technologyreview.co...

To say that Mann had "no intentional deception" is laughable at best.

As for recreating it with other proxies, how about this gem:

Now Steve McIntyre, who was principally responsible for showing that Mann’s original hockey stick was a fraud, has gone over Marcott’s data on the key proxies he uses for 20th century temperatures, ocean cores. McIntyre found that Marcott and his colleagues used previously published ocean core data, but have altered the dates represented by the cores, in some cases by as much as 1,000 years. Anthony Watts sums up:

        It seems the uptick in the 20th century is not real, being nothing more than an artifact of shoddy procedures where the dates on the proxy samples were changed for some strange reason.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/a...

So, for all the later hockey stick results that prove Mann's original, how many of them are faked?

I could go on and on, providing links to stories you probably don't believe, and you could go on and on providing rebuttals I probably don't believe. So let's not.

It's not my fault Mann decided to start along the line of "Fool me once, shame on you."

The only reason the Dems oppose KXL has nothing to do with the Koch bros. and everything to do with their own operatives/supporters. The Kochs are primarily social and fiscal Libertarians who donate a heck of a lot of money to charity and even candidates who don't admire them.

But who is Todd Steyer?
Billionaire hedge fund operator and “green” energy magnate Tom Steyer has pledged $100 million in the 2014 election cycle to help Democratic candidates who oppose the Keystone pipeline and who favor “green” energy over fossil fuels. Steyer claims to be a man of principle who has no financial interest in the causes he supports, but acts only for the public good. That is a ridiculous claim: Steyer is the ultimate rent-seeker who depends on government connections to produce subsidies and mandates that make his “green” energy investments profitable. He also is, or was until recently, a major investor in Kinder Morgan, which is building a competitor to the Keystone pipeline. Go here, here, here, here, here and here for more information about how Steyer uses his political donations and consequent connections to enhance his already vast fortune. But Steyer’s hypocrisy goes still deeper. Today, he is a bitter opponent of fossil fuels, especially coal. That fits with his current economic interests: banning coal-fired power plants will boost the value of his solar projects. But it was not always thus. In fact, Steyer owes his fortune in large part to the fact that he has been one of the world’s largest financers of coal projects. Tom Steyer was for coal before he was against it.

The Brothers Koch have no financial interest in KXL, they are neither customers nor investors, and they have taken no public position other than they have no public position.

I think the Dems doth protest too much.

The Koch brothers are not invested in the KXL project and have made no public statements other than that they have no interest in the KXL pipeline.

“Koch reiterates that it has no ownership or investment interest in the Keystone XL Pipeline, it is not a proposed shipper or customer, and it has not taken any position with regard to any legislation before Congress concerning the Keystone XL Pipeline.”

Face it, the Koch brothers are living rent free in your head and you really need to find a new boogeyman.

It seems that a significant fraction of today's political journalists view their job as shilling for liberal political causes, to the point they unapologetically get verifiable facts wrong or put off reporting on "inconvenient" stories until after elections.

At least bloggers are generally honest enough to state their political biases up front.

In the olden days, science could easily be mistaken for a bloodless intellectual game

By precisely what mature person with any shred of insight into human nature? It's kind of silly how the Church of Holy Progress has tried to co-opt scientists as some sort of secular priesthood. Get over it. Scientists are people, too. I'd expect Richard Feynman would have been a right blast of a blogger, if he yet lived.

The other ruling, by Judge Richard Leon, distinguished this case from Smith v. Maryland on the basis that the NSA's metadata collection was different in nature because of its volume. However, as Power Line's Paul Mirengoff noted,

But these changes provide no sound basis for distinguishing Smith. That case rests on the view that, because of the nature of metadata, its collection by the government without a warrant isn’t constitutionally problematic. This true no matter the quantity of metadata the government collects.

It's going to take the Supreme Court deciding that yes, you do have an expectation of privacy in records you did not originate, never possessed, and have no control over, and thus to throw Smith v. Maryland out the window, to have the NSA metadata collection ruled unconstitutional. Fourth Amendment jurisprudence rests very squarely on the idea that you only have an interest in not having subject to search those things and places where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. That's where the arguments will fall down.

Wal-Mart contributes to Think Progress (left wing propaganda group), not the Republicans.

That said, you REALLY think Wal-Mart wanted people offline on Black Friday? They have a website too you know... And the average Wal-Mart customer (just to unfairly typecast) is way more likely to desire not having to travel any distance.

The kind that doesn't look at their charts and say, "oh, that result isn't what we'd expect. Let's "normalize" it.

Thanks to the Southern Strategy, conservatism and racism now go hand-in-hand in this country.

Rubbish.

The “Southern Strategy” Debunked Again

It is the Left that promotes racial tribalism in America, not the right. The only place where you hear the subject of race traitors in "respectable" company in America is among progressives when they refer to black or Hispanic conservatives. Hatred of "Zionists" or "Zionism" is often a fig leaf for hatred of Israelis, if not in fact Jews. In this the American Left is coming ever closer to resembling the European Left.

The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews

I think there are very few Americans who actually cheered the death of Trayvon Martin.

Please explain this then.

The military has actively attempted to censor what their troops read, and the above just came out earlier this month. You all are trying to covering up censorship because you agree with it. If it happened once, you might be believed, but now we have a pattern of this behavior from the DOD. You are equal to Ms. Learner from the IRS claiming that the IRS only targeted a couple of people from one office, research today shows that NO group with the name "tea party" in it got tax exempt status for over 2 years, thats 100% suppression by the IRS and they lied about it just like you are doing now.

Yes, actually. You can find the basic argument here, but before I saw other takedowns I took the numbers from the reference article in the JAMA and plotted total murder and firearm homicide rates versus the legislative score he gave, and against the best numbers I could find on actual ownership rates. Lots of other graphs in there as I poked at the numbers out of curiosity. Total suicides not just firearm suicides go down with greater gun control efforts, which surprised me because I expected guns to mostly be a substitution rather than addition. Still lots of confounding variables left unaccounted for. The suicide rates in Alaska and Wyoming probably have more to do with them being more depressing places to live for people, and both depression and attitude towards guns are likely related to living in a sparsely populated region. Deliberate homicides and murder rates aren't the same thing because of self defense laws. Legitimate self defense is still included in homicide numbers.

The distinction matters, because people usually support gun control because they are worried about being murdered, not because they are worried about killing themselves. The association that does exist between suicide rates and ownership isn't all that strong. Lots of variance, and the suicide rate goes from roughly 10 per 100,000 to 15 as ownership rates climb from about 12% to 55%. Given that auto deaths completely dwarf accidental firearm deaths, are you going to support a ban on vehicles? How about swimming pools?

One of the most interesting things in the original JAMA article is that he found a negative correlation between certain types of gun control and gun homicides. I give him props for including that information.

“The choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty and State domination; between concentration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of ownership over the widest number of individuals; between the dead hand of monopoly and the stimulus of competition; between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energy and ingenuity; between a policy of levelling down and a policy of opportunity for all to rise upwards from a basic standard. — Sir Winston Churchill, WOLVERHAMPTON, 23 JULY 1949” (Kudos )
 

Will the debate be this good?

Did you hear the entire speech, or just the out of context part Fox and Romney spread?

You obviously didn't hear it. If you had you'd not be trying to make people listen to the whole thing, because the context made his remarks FAR WORSE than just that simple quote would imply.

Everyone - don't listen to this simpleton parroting liberal talking points about about the "context" alleviating what Obama said (note HE didn't link to the whole thing, not wanting you to actually know). Watch the whole thing as he asks you to and then decide for yourself.

Obama should not be elected based solely on that interview. Green, Libertarian, Republican - vote for ANYONE else, but not someone who firmly believes people are simply wards of the state, incapable of creation without a hand from the federal government.

Based of what metrics? Scored by whom? Voters?

Based on what happens. We would try it. If the results weren't catastrophically bad, then we could conclude that the programs weren't a necessary evil.

But my response was to answer your question. I'm in favor of smaller government until it can't be made any smaller. Because taxes and government are a necessary evil. Let's have the least evil we can. You asked. That's the answer.

I suspect you're not aware of how popular things like Social Security and Medicare are.

"Popular" isn't "good". I don't care how popular they are. If people want stolen money, it's because they've allowed themselves to become corrupt. I'm asking people to please be less corrupt. It's a request.

I never voted to join the US either. I was born here.

That's a good point. But I didn't claim democracy was perfect. From a combination of population and technology, there's an increasing trend of us affecting and being affected by our neighbors. We're not able to head off over the horizon and try to make a go of it on our own anymore. Barring some massive depopulation here, the next time that'll be possible is when we start colonizing space.

And was there somewhere you'd rather have been born? Is there somewhere closer to your ideal?

Again, this was in response to "Nowhere in that scenario did I see the Norwegian people voting to join the U.S., so that's immoral." Voting to join either changes the morality of one group levying taxes on another, or it doesn't.

I think I would have been better off being born other places. Lots of other places have a better family tradition and less corrupt politics and better education. I am very capable and healthy and industrious and frugal. I should be able to do relatively well in any society where those traits are valued. But I underperform in the US because the US civil society favors the credentialed and the connected over the capable, the weak over the healthy, and non-workers over the industrious. The US penalizes the frugal to bail out the foolish.

But it's OK for the President and his party to target and seek to loot and oppress "millionaires and billionaires".

Calling a mildly progressive tax scheme looting and oppression is almost as silly as calling it slavery. You're in favor of some taxation, so I don't know why you want to call your own positions looting, oppression and slavery.

It's either OK to target people or it isn't. We can't target Norwegians. But it's OK to target people in the US. Why?

Are you in favor of treating capital gains as normal income? Investment bankers and other investors get preferential treatment compared to wage earners.

Wage earners don't take any monetary risk. You work, you get paid. Investors often lose their entire investment. It's not the same. Why should it be taxed the same?

I'd be in favor of lowering taxes on wage earners to a very low level. Once this level is very low, I'm in favor of taxing capital gains at that level too.

I'm missing your point on the health references.

They were targeted and demonized. You want to protect Norwegians from being targeted for oppression. Why aren't US citizens in the health industries worthy of being protected from such things?

Regarding energy, are you in favor of eliminating the preferential treatment (subsidies) given to oil companies?

You're repeating a false talking point.

Why are we allowing the entire population of Norway to get away with not paying taxes to the US? It's a tax subsidy!

There is no "evidence" he was treated for any injury.

Yes, there is. It is directly stated in the police report. The fact that you don't believe it doesn't change anything. The police report would be accepted as evidence in court. The lack of a paramedics report specifying the bandages used on what wound doesn't change anything.

The police report that states he was injured and treated at the scene:

"While I was in such close contact with Zimmerman, I could observe that his back appeared to be wet and was covered in grass, as if he had been laying on his back on the ground. Zimmerman was also bleeding from the nose and back of his head. . . .

Zimmerman was placed in the rear of my police vehicle and was given first aid by the SFD.

Plus, you are so interested in minutia, you miss the point that a white man (well, whitish, as he identifies as a white hispanic, having a white father and hispanic mother) holding a smoking gun standing over a black man is questioned and released, never arrested or charged. If the situation were reversed, then there would be a separate set of rules applied.

Zimmerman was taken into custody to the police station in hand cuffs and questioned. He was then released. Since it was apparently a justifiable self-defense shooting he wouldn't be charged. You don't get charged when the shooting is deemed justified under the law. I don't know how that could be any clearer. This might change since there is apparently going to be a special prosecutor appointed to look into this and I wouldn't deny the possibility of something being trumped up to charge him with as a result of Al Sharpton's agitation and various riots. Or maybe there are really new facts that would show that Zimmerman broke the law somehow - but do you think having thousands of people protesting, riots, and death threats inspired by the Black Panthers is really how this should be handled? The biggest impact of race in this case is Al Sharpton and company, and groups like the Black Panthers injecting themselves into the controversy.

No justice, no agitation

If only the guy who shot another person without witnesses would have been actually *investigated*, instead of letting him walk entirely on his own testimony...

In short, you don't know what you are talking about, in pretty much any regard. Well done.

NOT BREAKING NEWS on Zimmerman being bloodi

Trayvon Martin Shooter Told Cops Teenager Went For His Gun (Also, watch video)

In addition, an eyewitness, 13-year-old Austin Brown, told police he saw a man fitting Zimmerman's description lying on the grass moaning and crying for help just seconds before he heard the gunshot that killed Martin.

Would coudl possibly go wrong with enough people having your level in insight?

KillZimmerman’ Twitter advocates violence against Martin’s killer
How Many Crimes Did the New Black Panthers Commit in Florida?

When New Black Panther Mikhail Muhammad called for the mobilization of a 10,000-strong black male mob to capture George Zimmerman, we glimpsed into the depths of racial depravity of the organization. “An eye for an eye,” Muhammad threatened. A cash bounty for Zimmerman, “dead or alive,” provided a nasty incentive for thugs across the land.

Paper: Spike Lee tweeted incorrect George Zimmerman address, possibly putting Sanford woman in danger

Inconvenient narratives in the Martin case

Civil rights leaders condemn Sharpton's call for escalated civil disobedience

Sad

It's a wonder that civilization withstands your level of insight as it appears to be all too common.

"Occupy Wall Street" is a fringe movement spouting tired, old, leftist dogma and hate. The only thing it has in common with the "Arab Spring" is that there are threads of anti-Semitism running through both.

Occupy Wall Street Goes Global

Sunday Reflection: Protestors should try occupying reality for real change

Right now, idealistic young Americans are gathered together to fight injustice and build a better world.
Sure, they're a little dirty, and maybe some of their language is a bit rough, but they've left behind family and friends, as well as the creature comforts the rest of us take for granted, to make a stand for what they believe in.

It's just too bad that today the mainstream media is focusing on the spoiled, incoherent clowns of Occupy Wall Street and ignoring our young fighting men and women.

The mainstream media's cameras can't get enough of these pierced protesters, with their crudely written signs proclaiming their unfocused discontent and general anger at society's selfishness in failing to satisfy their every want and desire.

Of course, those cameras discreetly turn away when the placards demanding socialist revolution and blaming the Jews come out. The protesters' function is to demonstrate inchoate outrage simply by being there. When they start talking, they start alienating the normals.

These are Potemkin protesters, community organized by government worker unions to allow liberal Democrats a way to triangulate to the center next year. Only the rebel media outfits will actually stick a mic in the protesters' dirty faces and let them talk.

What comes out is a confused hash of gripes about their banks, complaints about their student loans, and whining about the quality of their jobs.

Tragically, graduates of Ivy League universities brandishing master's degrees in minority women's studies are not getting jobs that pay enough to service their $150,000 student loans. Who could have seen that coming?

PICKET: Occupy Wall Street protesters post manifesto of 'demands'

Nazis and Communists Throw Their Support Behind Occupy Wall Street Movements (Updated)

Occupy L.A. Speaker: Violence will be Necessary to Achieve Our Goals

Video: Occupy Portland Protesters Sing “F*ck the USA”

THOUSANDS Of Obama-Endorsed “Occupy Chicago” Protesters CHEER the Communists (Video)

Wall Street: Occupied by Anti-Semites?

Political party paying Occupy Wall Street protesters?

More Anti-Semitism at Occupy Los Angeles

Coast Guard member spit on near Occupy Boston tents

‘Occupy’ protesters branch out

Intelligence Court Upholds Government's Warrantless Surveillance Intercept Power

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review has made public its decision, reached last August, that the federal government has the power to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a specific court order, even when Americans' private communications may be involved. The case arose from a challenge to this power brought by a telecommunications company whose identity has not been disclosed. The company had refused to turn over its relevant records, claiming that the president lacked constitutional authority to obtain them without a court order.

The "FISA court" issued a secret ruling that Congress acted within its authority when it passed the Protect America Act, which gave the executive branch broad power to eavesdrop on international communications. That ruling, it is now being reported, was upheld upon appellate review.

I don't know.. The whole warrant-less spying of American citizens?

From the article:

In 2007, the indictment says, Drake willfully retained top-secret defense documents that he had sworn an oath to protect, sneaking them out of the intelligence agency’s headquarters, at Fort Meade, Maryland, and taking them home, for the purpose of “unauthorized disclosure.”

He should have taken them to the Inspector General, or Congress.

Sorry, but warrantless wiretaps are OK for at least some national security purposes.

Intelligence Court Upholds Government's Warrantless Surveillance Intercept Power

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review has made public its decision, reached last August, that the federal government has the power to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a specific court order, even when Americans' private communications may be involved. The case arose from a challenge to this power brought by a telecommunications company whose identity has not been disclosed. The company had refused to turn over its relevant records, claiming that the president lacked constitutional authority to obtain them without a court order.

The "FISA court" issued a secret ruling that Congress acted within its authority when it passed the Protect America Act, which gave the executive branch broad power to eavesdrop on international communications. That ruling, it is now being reported, was upheld upon appellate review.

In his New York Times story on the case, Eric Lichtblau, who disclosed the existence of the warrantless surveillance program, sniffs that the court's ruling "may offer legal credence to the Bush administration's repeated assertions that the president has the power to act without specific court approval in ordering national security eavesdropping that may involve Americans." (emphasis added) I guess so. Rulings by appellate courts, by definition, give "legal credence" to the positions they embrace. And here we're talking about a court with special expertise in the subject matter that is ruling on an essentially novel issue.

This has been ruled upon by courts a number of times.

There is no right to private communications with terrorist groups making war on the United States.

The 4th Amendment, for example.

The article contradicts you.

DHS spokesman Jason Ciliberti says the ACLU's description of the zone as "Constitution-Free" couldn't be further from the truth and that the check points follow rules set by Supreme Court rulings.

"We don't have the abilitty to just set up checkpoints willy-nilly," Ciliberti said. "The Supreme Court has determined that brief investigative encontuers do not constitute a serach or seizure."

When citizens or visa holders encounter a checkpoint, most are waived on after showing identification, but if an agent suspects the person is not lawfully in the country, the agent can detain the person until the agent's investigation is satisfied.

The government has long had the power to set up such check points, but has recently expanded the number of permanent and 'tactical' check points and deployed them in areas they hadn't before -- such as near the Canadian border.

The courts, however, are not on the ACLU's side -- and have regularly ruled that the Fourth Amendment's protections don't extend to the border area, airport screening or even to laptops at the border.

Free the Nuremberg 24!
A presidential pledge broken, thank goodness

The Fourth Amendment is in fine shape, but many people here have mistaken notions about its application..