Beginning yesterday and continuing today, Obama administration officials are briefing key members of Congress on the release, which may happen as early as next week.  There apparently has been no decision on where the Uighurs will be turned loose.  Earlier reports suggested they could be released in Alexandria, Virginia or Washington, D.C.

Human Events 

Come on, who's surprised? The White House-engineered photo-op of low-flying Air Force aircraft that caused terror in New York City this week epitomizes the Age of Obama. What better way to mark 100 days in office than with an appalling exercise in pointless taxpayer-funded stagecraft?

The superficiality, the unseriousness, the hubris, the obliviousness to post-9/11 realities: They were trademarks of the Obama campaign, and they are the tattoos on his governance.

He never leaves home without his teleprompter. All the Obama world's a stage. Or a world ready to be staged.

So is it any wonder he would staff his White House military office with a clueless paper pusher who saw nothing wrong with spending inordinate government resources -- and re-creating 9/11 havoc -- to update Air Force One publicity shots? And who planned, believe it or not, to do the same in Washington, D.C., next month, where the 9/11 jihadists murdered 53 passengers and 6 crewmembers on board American Airlines Flight 77, and 125 military and civilian personnel inside the Pentagon?

All for some publicity shots.

No one should be shocked. Remember: Barack Obama is the frivolous man who concocted his own presidential-looking Great Seal before he was elected. An ego big enough to publicly display a ridiculous "Vero Possumus" ("Yes, we can" in Latin) motto and a regal eagle with the Obama campaign logo emblazoned on its chest is an ego capable of far more reckless things. Obama orchestrated a grand photo-op in Berlin, Germany, to declare his world citizenship at the Siegessäule -- the Victory Column -- a soaring monument of arrogance championed by Adolf Hitler and Third Reich architect Albert Speer. He manufactured his own Open Temple of The One in Denver for the Democratic National Convention last summer, replete with fake Greek columns.

Since taking office, Obama has remained in perpetual campaign mode, idling in 9/10 gear. The photo album has filled up quickly with megalomaniacal moments. When his massive pork-filled stimulus package was in trouble, he ran to Ft. Myers, Fla., for a carefully choreographed revival meeting with his most ardent supporters. "It is such a blessing to see you. Oh! Gracious God, thank you so much!" one young booster exclaimed.

The president's famous embrace with another questioner -- homeless woman Henrietta Hughes, a perpetually unemployed drifter looking for a handout -- turned up on the White House online retrospective of the stimulus bill victory. (Missing: The photos of hundreds of thousands of Americans who took to the streets in Tea Party protests to oppose this massive act of generational theft and expansion of the entitlement state.)

Another Kodak moment from the stimulus campaign exposed Obama's hype of the spending boondoggle's effects. Using a Caterpillar plant and workers as a backdrop, Obama grandly promised that if the stimulus passed, Caterpillar would rehire laid-off workers. It made front-page headlines. After the photo-op: Caterpillar's own CEO refuted the bogus promise and last week posted its first quarterly net loss in 16 years. After the signing, it finally dawned on pliant media outlets that the stimulus money was stupendously wasteful, and the job creation estimates, bogus. No pictures of those epiphanies.

Obama's photo-ops abroad have been more unsettling: Bowing and scraping before Saudi King Abdullah, trashing America as "arrogant" (talk about a pot and kettle moment) in front of adoring French and German students, chumming it up with Venezuelan thug-in-chief Hugo Chavez. These are the defining images of a stunt(ed) presidency blind to our enemies and in a perpetual state of (re)pose.

Michelle is really hot today...

Townhall 

IT'S snowing in April. Ice is spreading in Antarctica. The Great Barrier Reef is as healthy as ever.

And that's just the news of the past week. Truly, it never rains but it pours - and all over our global warming alarmists.

Time's up for this absurd scaremongering. The fears are being contradicted by the facts, and more so by the week.

Doubt it? Then here's a test.

Name just three clear signs the planet is warming as the alarmists claim it should. Just three. Chances are your "proofs" are in fact on my list of 10 Top Myths about global warming.

And if your "proofs" indeed turn out to be false, don't get angry with me.

Just ask yourself: Why do you still believe that man is heating the planet to hell? What evidence do you have?

So let's see if facts matter more to you than faith, and observations more than predictions...

MYTH 1

THE WORLD IS WARMING

Wrong. It is true the world did warm between 1975 and 1998, but even Professor David Karoly, one of our leading alarmists, admitted this week "temperatures have dropped" since - "both in surface temperatures and in atmospheric temperatures measured from satellites". In fact, the fall in temperatures from just 2002 has already wiped out half the warming our planet experienced last century. (Check data from Britain's Hadley Centre, NASA's Aqua satellite and the US National Climatic Data Centre.)

Some experts, such as Karoly, claim this proves nothing and the world will soon start warming again. Others, such as Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University, point out that so many years of cooling already contradict the theory that man's rapidly increasing gases must drive up temperatures ever faster.

But that's all theory. The question I've asked is: What signs can you actually see of the man-made warming that the alarmists predicted?

Go see the rest at The Herald Sun 

Clean energy and federal standards are hot topics in the nation's capital these days. One issue tossed around by policy wonks is the possibility of creating a national standard for how much electricity must be obtained from renewable resources.

However, any consideration of a federal renewable electricity standard (RES) must start with a basic truth about energy production and usage: Markets talk; mandates shock.

Take a look at the federal mandate to add ethanol to gasoline. Most people (except those in Congress) agree it helped lead to last year's global food-price explosion while also degrading the environment. Not to mention that it drove overall energy prices higher because of the additive's relative inefficiency.

Contrast that mandate to the market's response last year to high oil prices. Energy use dropped dramatically - consumers drove about 3.6 percent less last year in the United States alone - helping push down oil and natural gas prices, and thereby emissions.

But as shocking as most mandates are, few could produce more of a jolt to consumers, businesses and entire regions of our country - while delivering fewer of the intended benefits - than the renewable-electricity standards being considered in Congress.

Proposed bills would require generation of 20 percent to 25 percent of electric power from renewable sources by dates ranging from 2020 to 2025. Their problems begin with how to define a renewable source.

Most proposed mandates omit existing production of large-scale hydroelectric power, nuclear power and clean coal. These resources account for 6 percent, 20 percent and 50 percent, respectfully, of U.S. electricity generation. Leaving out these more practical sources in the nation's energy plans means RES targets could be met only at extraordinary cost - if at all.

Among the renewable sources that are considered by proposed mandates, biomass doesn't transport well, and solar panels are more practical for small-scale, home-based use because of space requirements.

In fact, the most practical use of solar energy is the old-fashioned clothesline, which could displace up to 6 percent of power use.

Forbes nails it.  Go read the rest.

Washington Times 

Washington, D.C.—The extent to which American businesses will be able to compete – and American consumers, survive – under cap-and-trade is the topic of Day Three of the Waxman House hearings this afternoon. Dr. Robert Michaels, professor of economics at California State University at Fullerton and senior fellow for the Institute for Energy Research (IER), was one of the witnesses asked to testify before the Markey subcommittee today, calling cap-and-trade the “most profoundly anti-consumer legislation ever brought before a Congress.”

The following represents key excerpts from his prepared testimony:

“This bill’s entire thrust is to make energy needlessly scarce, and then somehow conclude that this action is good for the economy.”

“The higher prices mean lower standards of living for the American consumers who purchase them. They also mean that American goods become less attractive to foreign buyers than those from competitor nations that are attempting to develop their energy sectors rather than downgrade them.”

“Those who believe that re-spending of revenue from allowance auctions will create jobs have been conspicuously silent about jobs that will be destroyed in businesses that must purchase them.”

“What this bill really will create is not prosperity, but a less productive, less competitive economy with lower incomes, less opportunity, and less wealth to hand on to future generations.”

To read more of Dr. Michaels’ testimony, click here.

More from IER on the pitfalls of “green jobs”:

Study: Spain’s Experience: The Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources
Study: Green Jobs Myths
Study: Green Jobs: Fact or Fiction?
Blog: It Takes a Lot of Government Green to Create a Green Job

Nice job, Obamabots and Green Terrorists!

Canada Free Press

Obama is less popular than Nixon and Carter

President Obama's media cheerleaders are hailing how loved he is. But at the 100-day mark of his presidency, Mr. Obama is the second-least-popular president in 40 years.

According to Gallup's April survey, Americans have a lower approval of Mr. Obama at this point than all but one president since Gallup began tracking this in 1969. The only new president less popular was Bill Clinton, who got off to a notoriously bad start after trying to force homosexuals on the military and a federal raid in Waco, Texas, that killed 86. Mr. Obama's current approval rating of 56 percent is only one tick higher than the 55-percent approval Mr. Clinton had during those crises.

As the attached chart shows, five presidents rated higher than Mr. Obama after 100 days in office. Ronald Reagan topped the charts in April 1981 with 67 percent approval. Following the Gipper, in order of popularity, were: Jimmy Carter with 63 percent in 1977; George W. Bush with 62 percent in 2001; Richard Nixon with 61 percent in 1969; and George H.W. Bush with 58 percent in 1989.

It's no surprise the liberal media aren't anxious to point out that their darling is less popular than George W. Bush. But given the Gallup numbers, their hurrahs could be more subdued. USA Today's front page touted the April poll results as positive, with the headline: "Public thinks highly of Obama." The current cover of Newsweek magazine ponders "The Secret of His [Mr. Obama's] Success." The comparison with previous presidents is useful because they are usually popular during their first few months in office - and most presidents have been more popular than Mr. Obama.

Washington Times

The Messiah was elected to office, not based on any of his accomplishments, but based on the fact that he is "hip," and "the greatest orator of our time."

Ahhhhh, but now the truth is out. Barack Hussein Muhammad bin Obama is actually a much better READER than a SPEAKER.

His addiction to teleprompters, and his consequent revelation that he is not a man whose words emerge from an inner, burning conviction, but rather a man whose words are inserted into him by his handlers, continues.

Yesterday, before the National Academy of Sciences, Obama started to reintroduce some luminary that he had already introduced, then realized he was ahead of his teleprompter, and had to request that the teleprompter be fast forwarded a bit....

"In addition to John.... sorry... the, uhhhhhhh, I just noticed that I jumped the gun a little bit. Go ahead and move it [the teleprompter] up. I had already introduced you guys."

Video at the source site.

Obama Watch 

In an incredibly naive move, the Obama administration purposefully withheld information from the public about the frightening jet flyover Monday in New York City.

The decision caused panic in lower Manhattan. Office workers still worried about terrorist attacks after 9/11 flooded the streets as Air Force One -- one of President Obama's planes -- and fighter jets roared through the skies.

The part-photo op and part-training was a horrible mistake.

Besides costing businesses millions of dollars in lost productivity, the flyover exposed President Obama's staff to deserved ridicule for approving the mission.

For example, callers flooded the lines of conservative talk-shows in Kansas City on Monday. Some claimed this incident showed how disconnected from reality President Obama already has become about Americans' concerns over terrorism.

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg was among the top local officials angered because he was not told about the training exercise and photo-op. (Ut was a chance to take new pictures of the president's plane as it flew by the Statue of Liberty.)

The White House later Monday issued an apology. Obama reportedly was angered by the incident.

But the damage had been done. The public definitely should have been told about the flight.

Kansas City.com 

Believe it, champ. And welcome to the club.

He doesn’t name any names but there’s no question who he’s aiming at.

Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as “waterboarding&rdqu o; were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.

Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:

– The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.

– We understood what the CIA was doing.

– We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.

– We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.

– On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.

I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues.

The ranking Democratic member on the House intel committee in 2002 was, of course, Madam Speaker. There’s lots more at the link, often in biting language; you’re cheating yourself if you don’t read it all. Goss is opposed, naturally, to show trials on interrogation practices, but then so is 58 percent of the public, just the latest reminder that the nutroots position on this subject is fringe and that they’re destined to have their hearts broken by The One. I wonder if Team Barry will reach out to Cheney and offer him a deal: In exchange for him not releasing those two memos he’s after to prove that torture works, they’ll promise not to prosecute anyone who acted on Bush’s orders. Would Cheney take that deal, though? It depends, I guess, on how much he values his own legacy versus his loyalty to the people who implemented the policy. And, maybe, whether he’s coming around to the Noemie Emery position that torture trials wouldn’t be such a bad thing for the Bushies after all.

Hot Air

The Obama Administration could do no better than it is presently doing to aid and abet our terrorist enemies without actually, you know, supporting them.

How many indeed.

Red State

Opening a can of worms always tempts a mischief-maker, but it's risky business. That can of worms might turn out to be a can of snakes, like Barack Obama's latest gift to the nation.

The president's on-again, off-again, maybe-he-will and maybe-he-won't decision to punish someone who loosened tongues of Islamist terrorists at Guantanamo suddenly threatens not only the CIA interrogators and Justice Department lawyers, but even members of Congress. Maybe it won't stop there: if the lawyers who offered legal opinions are at risk of punishment for their legal advice, why not the members of Congress who knew what was going on? Why not the secretaries who typed up the transcripts? Why not the interns who fetched the coffee? All were accessories either before or after the fact.

We're on unfamiliar ground now. No president before has sought to punish his predecessor for policy decisions, no matter how wrong or wrong-headed. Lyndon B. Johnson's management of the Vietnam War was often ham-handed, as anyone who was there could tell you, and his policy makers sometimes verged on criminal incompetence. But Richard Nixon was never tempted to send LBJ or any of those presidential acolytes to prison. Abraham Lincoln, by his lights, would have had ample opportunity to hang Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, but even the rabid Republicans who survived the assassination stopped short of putting Davis in the dock, finally releasing him from imprisonment at Fort Monroe when judgment overcame lust for revenge. Lee was never touched.

Exacting revenge for unpopular policies is the norm in the third world, heretofore more likely in Barack Obama's ancestral Kenya than in America, more in the tradition of gangland Chicago than in Washington, where we count on cooler heads to prevail when raw emotion threatens to overwhelm sobriety and the undisciplined senses. We recall perceived national mistakes with the sadness of regret and even gratitude for lessons learned, not the frenzied catharsis of a St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Mr. Obama, having won the White House fair and square, is entitled to change any presidential policy he chooses, but the vindication of a national election does not entitle any president to exact mindless revenge.

Excellent.  Go read the rest.

Washington Times

Washington, DC -- UK's Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al Gore at a high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009 at 10am in Washington. Monckton told Climate Depot that the Democrats rescinded his scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy and Commerce hearing on Friday. Monckton said he was informed that he would not be allowed to testify alongside Gore when his plane landed from England Thursday afternoon.

“The House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face,” Monckton told Climate Depot in an exclusive interview. “They are cowards.”

According to Monckton, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), Ranking Member on the Energy & Commerce Committee, had invited him to go head to head with Gore and testify at the hearing on Capitol Hill Friday. But Monckton now says that when his airplane from London landed in the U.S. on Thursday, he was informed that the former Vice-President had “chickened out” and there would be no joint appearance. Gore is scheduled to testify on Friday to the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment's fourth day of hearings on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The hearing will be held in 2123 Rayburn House Office Building.

According to Monckton, House Democrats told the Republican committee staff earlier this week that they would be putting forward an unnamed 'celebrity' as their star witness Friday at a multi-panel climate hearing examining the House global warming bill. The "celebrity" witness turned out to be Gore. Monckton said the GOP replied they would respond to the Democrats' "celebrity" with an unnamed "celebrity" of their own. But Monckton claims that when the Democrats were told who the GOP witness would be, they refused to allow him to testify alongside Gore.

“The Democrats have a lot to learn about the right of free speech under the US Constitution. Congress Henry Waxman's (D-CA) refusal to expose Al Gore's sci-fi comedy-horror testimony to proper, independent scrutiny by the House minority reeks of naked fear,” Monckton said from the airport Thursday evening.

“Waxman knows there has been no 'global warming' for at least a decade. Waxman knows there has been seven and a half years' global cooling. Waxman knows that, in the words of the UK High Court judge who condemned Gore's mawkish movie as materially, seriously, serially inaccurate, 'the Armageddon scenario that he depicts is not based on any scientific view,'” Monckton explained. Monckton has previously testified before the House Committee in March. (See: Monckton: Have the courage to do nothing...US Congress told climate change is not real ) Monckton has also publicly challenged Gore to a debate. (See: Al Gore Challenged to International TV Debate on Global Warming By Lord Monckton - March 19, 2007 )

A call to the Democratic office of the House Energy and Commerce Committee seeking comment was not immediately returned Thursday night.

Climate Depot 

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.

Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

What a shock.

Washington Post 

President Barack Obama burned roughly 9,000 of jet fuel yesterday, Earth Day, and that only to deliver one speech in Iowa, reports CBS News's Mark Knoller in an April 22 Political Hotsheet blog post.

As if that weren't amusing enough, Knoller notes that the Air Force and the White House wouldn't disclose to Knoller how much fuel the president's plane burns on an average flight, so he had to consult with the manufacturer of the 747, Boeing:

In flying to and from Iowa today, President Obama took two flights on Air Force One and four on Marine One.

The press office at Andrews AFB wouldn’t give me the fuel consumption numbers for the 747 that serves as Air Force One without the approval of the White House Press Office, which as I write this has yet to be given.

But Boeing says its 747 burns about 5 gallons of fuel per mile. It’s 895 miles from Washington to Des Moines, so a round trip brings the fuel consumption for the fixed-wing portion of the President’s trip to 8,950 gallons. 

Knoller went on to detail Obama's fuel consumption on Marine One:

The trip also put President Obama on Marine One for round-trip flights between the White House and Andrews AFB and between Des Moines International Airport and Newton, Iowa, site of his Earth Day speech. It totaled about an hour of flight time. The VH-3D that serves as Marine One consumes about 1200 pounds of fuel per hour which comes out to about 166 gallons consumed flying the President today.

Not included in these calculations are the presidential vehicles that took him the short distance from the landing zone in Newton to the event site at the Trinity Structural Towers Manufacturing Plant.

In closing, however, Knoller arguably gave Obama a pass for the waste of gas, pitting the cost of the flight with the imagined benefits of the president plugging alternative energy:

President Obama could have saved at least 9,116 gallons of fuel by giving his speech at the White House – but no wind turbines are manufactured here. 

While this is true, couldn't the president have killed two birds with one stone by doing a teleconferenced speech that was beamed by satellite to the plant in Iowa but filmed at the White House? In doing so, the president could have heralded the fuel and time-saving promise of telecommuting while also plugging alternative energy. 

Of course doing so wouldn't mean the White House press corps getting a fun field trip with a president whose agenda they generally support, nor would it have yielded the still photos that the Obama White House communications shop would covet.

News Busters 

Contrary to a popular myth Al Gore and his followers are among the biggest enemies of the environment. Contrary to their lies carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant. CO2 is essential  to biological life. 

The CO2 cycle is the basis of carbon based biological life. Plants are carbon structures and CO2 provides the carbon they need.   Carbon is the second most common element in the human body.  Humans and other animals get their energy from the complex carbon compounds plants produce.  For example, each molecule of table sugar contains  12 carbon atoms. 

Plants are the original  solar energy collectors.  Plants  store solar energy as  the chemical bonds of carbon molecules. The ability of plants to grow depends upon the available sunlight and the amount of CO2 in the air.  

The global warming crowd claims that the atmosphere has too much CO2, but fast growing young plants benefit from higher concentrations .  Some greenhouses  use twice the concentration of CO2 to encourage faster, sturdier growth, in young plants.  

Plants use CO2 to produce food for animals which return part of the CO2 to the atmosphere for plants to reuse.  Unfortunately, humans don't return all plant carbon to the environment.  Humans use  plant carbon for building materials, clothing and long lasting paper products such as books.  Humans also put carbon containing food materials along with other carbon materials into landfills where it is unavailable for plants.

If it weren't for the combustion of carbon containing fossil fuels we might already be facing a shortage of atmospheric CO2 that could significantly reduce food production.

Production of biofuels depends upon ample supplies of CO2.  The most productive biofuel plants would  benefit from  higher concentrations of CO2 because more carbon would be available for conversion to fuel.

CO2 provides the best way to return carbon to the environment for plants to reuse. Animals exhale CO2 as their bodies use carbon molecules  for energy.   The wind moves it from where it is produced to where plants are growing.

The CO2 molecule is one of the simplest carbon molecules and is easy for plants to take apart for construction of complex molecules.  The cell is a microscopic factory.  Its genes are programmed to process CO2 into other molecules.   Taking carbon from the air is more efficient for plants because the carbon is available where it is needed.

Contrary to the lies of Gore and others,  increasing  the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will not increase temperatures.  Niels Bohr disproved the claim that the atmosphere was heated by absorbing infrared radiation (IR) with research that indicated the process of absorbing specific wavelengths of light changed the energy state of the electrons in gas molecules instead of increasing their temperature.  Physicist R. W. Wood demonstrated in a 1909 experiment that trapping IR did not heat greenhouses as many in the 19th Century had believed and thus the process could not heat the atmosphere either.            

It would be easier to make a case that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would reduce temperatures.  Plants use CO2 to store solar energy in the form of chemical fonds of carbon molecules rather than converting it into heat.   Plant covered areas do not become as hot as nearby  areas that lack plant cover.  Bare ground converts solar radiation to heat.

Increasing the availability of CO2 means that plants can store more solar energy than is possible with current levels of  CO2.  Storing  more solar energy would reduce the amount of solar energy converted to heat.

Global Warming, NOT! 

Yes, members of Congress approved the interrogation methods many of them now decry as torture.

That revelation comes from an article posted Wednesday on WeeklyStandard.com by senior writer Stephen F. Hayes, who reveals that Adm. Dennis Blair, President Obama’s national intelligence director, circulated a letter within the intelligence community last week that could prove embarrassing to both Democrats and the Obama administration.

Blair’s letter reportedly states that members of Congress repeatedly signed off on enhanced interrogation methods such as waterboarding.

“From 2002 through 2006 when the use of these techniques ended,” Blair wrote, “the leadership of the CIA repeatedly reported their activities both to Executive Branch policymakers and to members of Congress, and received permission to continue to use the techniques."

Blair’s letter was distributed April 16, the same day the president released portions of newly declassified internal memos describing in detail how the interrogations were to be performed.

Obama has been widely criticized by former Vice President Dick Cheney and others for holding back information that shows how successful the enhanced interrogations were in disrupting al-Qaida operations, including attacks against U.S. citizens.

Blair’s letter also stated that coercive interrogation provided “high-value information” and contributed to a better understanding of al-Qaida. An abridged version of Blair’s statement was released to the public, but it did not refer to the program’s success or the authorization from Congress.

Lying bastards.  Prosecute yourselves!

News Max 

Executive Summary

Global warming is one of the most serious issues of our times. Some experts claim the rise in temperature during the past century was “unprecedented&rdqu o; and proof that immediate action to reduce human greenhouse gas emissions must begin. Other experts say the warming was very modest and the case for action has yet to be made.

The reliability of data used to document temperature trends is of great importance in this debate. We can’t know for sure if global warming is a problem if we can’t trust the data.

The official record of temperatures in the continental United States comes from a network of 1,221 climate-monitoring stations overseen by the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Until now, no one had ever conducted a comprehensive review of the quality of the measurement environment of those stations.

During the past few years I recruited a team of more than 650 volunteers to visually inspect and photographically document more than 860 of these temperature stations. We were shocked by what we found.

We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.

In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/ reflecting heat source.

In other words, 9 of every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.

It gets worse. We observed that changes in the technology of temperature stations over time also has caused them to report a false warming trend. We found major gaps in the data record that were filled in with data from nearby sites, a practice that propagates and compounds errors. We found that adjustments to the data by both NOAA and another government agency, NASA, cause recent temperatures to look even higher.

The conclusion is inescapable: The U.S. temperature record is unreliable.

The errors in the record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature of 0.7º C (about 1.2º F) during the twentieth century. Consequently, this record should not be cited as evidence of any trend in temperature that may have occurred across the U.S. during the past century. Since the U.S. record is thought to be “the best in the world,” it follows that the global database is likely similarly compromised and unreliable.

This report presents actual photos of more than 100 temperature stations in the U.S., many of them demonstrating vividly the siting issues we found to be rampant in the network. Photographs of all 865 stations that have been surveyed so far can be found at www.surfacestations.org, where station photos can be browsed by state or searched for by name.

A long, but excellent read.  Go check it out.

The move could allow the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases, but it's more likely that the Obama administration will use the action to prod Congress to pass regulations around a system to cap and then trade emissions so that they are gradually lowered.

The EPA last month sent its proposal to the White House Office of Management and Budget, which reviewed and approved it. By law, the decision includes a public comment period before being finalized.

The EPA concluded that six greenhouse gases should be considered pollutants under the 1970 Clean Air Act, which is already used to curb emissions that cause acid rain, smog and soot.

But its declaration, set for 11 a.m. EDT Friday, will not spell out how or what to regulate. Instead, the EPA and lawmakers are expected to begin that discussion.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs last month said "the president has made quite clear" that he prefers to have the climate issue addressed by Congress as part of a broad, mandatory limit on heat-trapping emissions.

Moreover, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said her agency would not act alone and that any new regulations at the federal level would not prevent states from taking their own steps or preclude Congress from passing legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions, something Democratic leaders on the Hill are already working on.

Fucking idiots.

PMSNBC 

The seeds of discontent have already been sown. The divide between those who cherish true freedom and liberty and detest the intrusion of the federal government, and those who blindly follow an Obama administration ready to spend this country into an abyss of debt makes the Grand Canyon look like a crack in the sidewalk. 

Fertilizing this separation apparently is the job of the leftist lapdog media. Journalism that presents facts and relates a true balance is long dead, while advocacy reporting by the leftist press has become blatantly one sided. The coverage of massive Tea Party protests this week, when not largely ignored, was reported with disdain and contempt.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper, somewhat sober on this day, dismissed the protesters as a kook fringe of the radical right. He then went so far as to say the protests were “anti-CNN”. (They probably are)

Throwing more dung on the growing discontent, US Homeland Security Department’s Janet Napolitano lashed out at the ‘radical right’ and said that US forces returning from the Iraq and Afghan wars were potential right-wing extremist recruits. Also ripe for being tagged as potential terrorists were gun owners and the tax protesters themselves.

In his economic address on Tax Day the president decried the use of taxes as a political wedge issue “to scare people into supporting policies that increased the burden on working people instead of helping them live their dreams.” Obama’s words are chilling! Translated: “if you don’t agree with how I intend to enslave America you are going to pay for not bowing down to me”.

Notice that if you protest unfair taxation you are essentially unpatriotic. If you don’t embrace socialism and an ever increasing federal government you must be part of the radical right. If you stand for the moral definition of marriage being between one man and one woman you are intolerant and guilty of a hate crime. If you are anti-abortion you are a potential terrorist.

The Texas talk of sovereignty and state’s rights is just the beginning.  The impact of the Uncivil War’s first skirmishes may not have been fully relayed by the mainstream media, but the new age of information flows on the internet. Until an oppressive government figures out how to filter it, those numbers of those who see the coming struggle to hold onto their precious liberties will continue to grow. 

Obama’s misguided and un-American demeanor on his recent European trip in openly showing his disdain for America is more than disturbing. His foreign policy talk on Iran and North Korea gives our antagonists the perception that America is weak and easily manipulated. This behavior has given true patriots yet more concern and reason to want to separate from a president and congress that is all too willing to dispose of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

It will only get worse. The divide will grow deeper and wider than most of us can imagine. And as you voice your disagreements with an out of control federal government and protest the immoral and unpatriotic actions of Barack Obama, you will be vilified by the leftist media, tagged as terrorists by Homeland Security, and told by this president that you are what is wrong with America.

Canada Free Press

This video with CNN anchor Susan Roesgen is pretty unreal. She attends the Chicago tea party, picks some wacko out of the crowd and tries to argue with him about whether Obama's a fascist (and even then the guy with the ridiculous Obama-as-Hitler sign comes off more willing to engage in discussion than her), then she talks to a guy who seems perfectly reasonable and rudely cuts him off multiple times. She then attacks Fox News, ranting that the crowd is anti-CNN and says that the tea party is not "family viewing." Of all the leftist protests I've covered over the years — and I've covered many ofthem — I have never seen a reporter enter the fray and act personally offended by the many, many examples of outrageous behavior at a protest. There's little to be gained by it, and it's simply not professional. What Roesgen is doing here pure hackery. Even as grandstanding, she fails. She goes about things with all the subtlety of a brick through a window, and in the end it appears she's just an angry jerk.

Of course in 2006, Roesgen felt a bit differently regarding President Bush, according to this Newsbusters report:

A protester wearing a George W. Bush mask, complete with a colored in Hitler-esque mustache and red horns attached to the forehead was deemed a Bush "look-alike" by reporter Susan Roesgen ... It was then that the demonstrator wearing the Bush mask was highlighted on camera, while Roesgen narrated, "But while a look-alike showed up with a wad of cash, Mr. Bush did not." The "wad of cash" in the demonstrator's hand was actually several phony dollar bills mocking the Bush administration.

Roesgen didn't bother angrily confronting that protester who compared the President to Hitler when Bush was in office. No, she used them as a prop to illustrate her story. Double standard much?

Of course, this is the same Susan Roesgen whose report on Obama speaking at Notre Dame observed that Obama "leans pro-choice" and later said to Wolf Blitzer, "Can you believe that, Wolf, they’re actually praying that God will change the heart and mind of President Obama to make him pro-life?"

Even The Daily Show singled Roesgen out for special ridicule for her desperate attempts to make herself part of the story when she was covering the floods in Fargo. Note to CNN: Take Roesgen out behind the woodshed and mercifully ablate her career before she embarasses you any further.

NRO 

If there is one thing that yesterday’s nationwide Tea Parties proved is that our mainstream media is indubitably, unequivocably, inarguably the dutiful propaganda arm of the Democrat Party.

Merely months ago you’d be hard-pressed to find a mainstream news report covering an anti-war protest without exhilaration, an anti-Bush protest without barely hidden glee, a pro-embryonic-stem-cell research or pro-abortion rally without encouragement, or an illegal immigration rights rally without empathy. For eight years dissent was patriotic. Bush-bashing was patriotic. Troop-bashing was patriotic. America-bashing was patriotic. Captialism-bashing was patriotic. 

And the mainstream media, incessantly defending itself as objective and fair, never failed make it a point to tell us so.

So, when a Democrat is in the White House (with a barely 50-50 approval rate, mind you) and there’s a nationwide protest against his policies, here is our supposedly objective mainstream news at work:

ABC news parroted rumors originating from the left-wing blogs that the protests were really organized by people fronting for “corporate interests” and used the (undeniable) fact that Fox News and righty radio commentators as some smoking gun that the protests had sponsorship from these outlets.

CBS touted a Gallup Poll (that they just happened to have that day) that Americans think their income tax this year is fair 61% to 35%.

NBC made fun of D.C. protestors because they failed to get a permit from the district to dump a million teabags in the park across the street from the White House (see below).

CNN’s Anderson Cooper ridiculed the protests by making obscene jokes about “tea-bagging.” Then correspondent Susan Roesgen did her job at the Chicago Tea Party by interrupting and insulting attendees she was supposedly interviewing.

But CNN wasn’t done. On their website is an article about last week’s release of a DHS report warning about the rising of “right wing extremist” groups in the United States. The photo accompanying the article? A Getty file photo of parading neo-Nazis. Gee, wonder what they’re trying to say.

Speaking of that DHS report, which cites not a single group by name, Mike Sargent at NewsBusters notes that a couple months ago a DHS report came out warning of domestic terrorism from left-wing extremist groups. The report actually mentioned several groups by name, including the enviro-wacko group Earth Liberation Front. How many mainstream media outlets reported on this DHS report? ZERO.

During an interview with Howard Dean on MSNBC (home of ultra-lefties Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann), the DNC Chair also used the mocking “tea bag” reference. Indeed, if you go to any lefty blog or website, “tea bag party” is the diss of choice for the Tea Parties. I find it not coincidental in the least that the DNC Chair is liberally using the same terminology.

(See NewsBusters for details of the above instances. They are a treasure trove of liberal media bias)

Also on MSNBC, upon hearing news reports of “right wing extremism,” viewers would be treated to the Republican Party logo placed in the background. Nooo, no subliminal messages going on here. What? Republican Party = right-wing extremism? Where would you get that idea?

Go read the rest at Vocal Minority 

In a study published in the new journal from the Society for Applied Microbiology: Environmental Microbiology Reports, scientists from Spain analysed two apiaries and found evidence of honey bee colony depopulation syndrome (also known as colony collapse disorder in the USA). They found no evidence of any other cause of the disease (such as the Varroa destructor, IAPV or pesticides), other than infection with Nosema ceranae. The researchers then treated the infected surviving under-populated colonies with the antibiotic drug, flumagillin and demonstrated complete recovery of all infected colonies.

Whataminit!!  A couple of months ago this was caused by GLOBAL WARMING-BAYER-EVIL CORPORATIONS!  Wha' happen?

Science Daily 

At least one third of the people in this country are drooling halfwits who don’t deserve to live here, call themselves Americans or vote to destroy our liberties.

New Rasmussen surveys confirm this.

The first tells us nearly a third of Americans under 40 believes they can get reliable news from the Colbert Report and the Jon Stewart “comedy” shows. In the 18 to 29 group (30%) and 30 to 39 (32%) believe this, proving these people are actually getting dumber as they age.

Of all respondents four in ten (the real jackasses) believe these comedy shows make Americans “more informed about news events.” Democrats of course, believe this dribble by a ratio of approximately 5 to 1.

The next survey’s data reminds us our government schools are failures. Just under a third of respondents are in favor of salary caps on professional athletes and movie actors. They want one million dollar salary caps for these people.

The worst news in these numbers is that the younger the respondent the more likely he or she is to favor handing government the power to cap salaries.

The last survey tells us 47% don’t think capitalism is better than socialism.

History tells us during the American Revolution we were divided into thirds. One third risked their lives and fought for our liberty. One third fought shoulder to shoulder with the British against American liberty. The final third hid in their basements with our flag and a Union Jack waiting to see which one they should come up waving. It seems to be little different today.

We are fighting on two fronts. We have to beat Obama’s socialist power grab, and his army of simpleton lackeys. Teach your children about American freedom because government schools won’t. We can’t lose this fight.

Get educated and get up and fight. America needs you. We have to pull this wagon or no one will.

Write letters make phone calls, talk to people at every opportunity. “I never talk about politics” just doesn’t cut it anymore. Thinking like this has led to us being where we are.

The Collins Report 

Hillary Clinton was commenting about the situation concerning the so-called “Somali pirates,” and during her remarks she let loose with a “let’s change the subject” laugh that she hasn’t made since a reporter spotted a cheerleader under Bill’s podium back in ‘93.

Here’s the video.

For those wondering about the reason for Hillary’s sudden cackle, I have five theories:

1) Nervous laughter because she suddenly realized she would be reprimanded for saying “piracy” instead of using a slight variation of the Administration’s preferred term, “Man-caused seafaring disaster.”

2) Desperately trying to suppress the urge to say “ARRRR!.”

3) Caught off guard by being asked about doing nothing about the Somali pirates when she was expecting to be asked about doing nothing about North Korea’s missile launch and Iran’s nuclear program.

4) Giddy because her “the world needs to come together to end the scourge of piracy” remark gave her a book idea: It Takes a Village to Erase a Pirate

And the most likely possibility…

5) The guy standing next to her looks an awful lot like somebody who just baked a Moroccan air biscuit, doesn’t he?

One of the most disconcerting traits of the Obama presidency so far is that whenever something bad happens, the first response of the administration is to very sternly wonder why nobody else is doing anything about it. “Global consensus” is required to attack everything except our paychecks. Now that’s piracy.

Update: John Kerry says this serious “pirate” situation calls for immediate hearings! That should scare ‘em, Senator.

For a preview of those hearings, click here.

Michelle Malkin

President Barack Obama has recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. You name it, he blew it. What was his big deal economic programme that he was determined to drive through the G20 summit? Another massive stimulus package, globally funded and co-ordinated. Did he achieve it? Not so as you'd notice.

Barack is not the first New World ingenue to discover that European leaders will load him with praise, struggle sycophantically to be photographed with him and outdo him in Utopian rhetoric. But when it comes to the critical moment of opening their wallets - suddenly it is flag-day in Aberdeen. Okay, put the G20 down to inexperience, beginner's nerves, what you will.

On to Nato (sic) and the next big objective: to persuade the same European evasion experts that America, Britain and Canada should no longer bear the brunt of the Afghan struggle virtually unassisted. The Old World sucked through its teeth, said that was asking a lot - but, seeing it was Barack, to whom they could refuse nothing, they would graciously accede to his wishes.

So The One retired triumphant, having secured a massive contribution of 5,000 extra troops - all of them non-combatant, of course - which must really have put the wind up the Taliban, at the prospect of 5,000 more infidel cooks and bottle-washers swarming into the less hazardous regions of Afghanistan.

Then came the dramatic bit, the authentic West Wing script, with the President wakened in the middle of the night in Prague to be told that Kim Jong-il had just launched a Taepodong-2 missile. America had Aegis destroyers tracking the missile and could have shot it down. But Uncle Sam had a sterner reprisal in store for l'il ole Kim (as Dame Edna might call him): a multi-megaton strike of Obama hot air.

Why do we have to rely on the British Press to hear the truth about SMOTUS?

The Telegraph

"We send our heartfelt condolences to the families of those killed in the earthquake. Our embassy in Rome will provide 50,000 (dollars) in emergency relief funding," State Department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters.

Italian authorities told the United States they did not need rescue teams, Wood said.