Lindsey Graham, Olympia Snowe, Dede Scozzafava…  Whoops—that’s the Huffington Post’s Top 10 Conservatives of 2009!

10. Hannah Giles, Conservative Activist and “Performing Artist” – Twenty-year-old Giles helped bust ACORN with her brilliantly direct scheme of walking right into their offices and asking if they’d help her set up a prostitution ring with underage El Salvadoran girls, to which they responded by falling all over themselves to comply.  It’s so horrifying it’s like those classic psychology experiments in which researchers had no idea their subjects would actually carry out their instructions, like Stanley Milgram’s electric shock experiment.

9. Sarah Palin, Democratic Congressional Reelection Death Panelist – This summer Palin helped put Democrats’ health care “reform” initiative on indefinite life support by identifying the logical conclusion of their plans to expand health care coverage while slashing Medicare and not increasing the deficit—i.e., health care rationing, or “death panels.”  In addition to resigning in July and saving Alaskans millions by heading off costly and baseless ethics complaints against her, she released an autobiography that’s on track to become the best-selling political memoir ever.

8. Dick Cheney, Former Vice President and Current Presidential Superego – If there’s anything that can compensate for not having Dick Cheney as VP anymore, it’s getting to hear him expound on the pigheaded mistakes the new President is making again and again on foreign policy.  Cheney hammered Obama for promising to close Guantanamo Bay, for releasing the “torture” memos, for “dithering” over his decision on General Stanley McChrystal’s request for more troops in Afghanistan, and for bringing self-confessed 9/11 masterminds to Manhattan for civilian trials.  read more »

I hate to have to point out the obvious to the rosy-cheeked, starry-eyed eco-warriors heading en masse to the international global warming summit this week (OK—I love to point it out), but the fact is that the Copenhagen Climate Conference is going to be, on every level, a monumental failure.

As has been reported for months, the nations of the world have not agreed, and will not agree, to legally binding reductions or limits on carbon dioxide emissions at the conference.  The biggest “polluters” are least likely to volunteer to give up their 21st-century living standards (the U.S., Australia, Canada) or their efforts to achieve such (China, India, Brazil).

As George Will noted, the U.S. population in 2050 will have risen to 420 million, which means that if we honor Obama’s pledge to reduce our nation’s “carbon footprint” by then to 80% below 2005 levels, emissions per capita “will be about what they were in 1875.  That.  Will.  Not.  Happen.”

Even climate change alarmists admit that pledges hinted at by Obama for Copenhagen and outlined in the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill passed by the House this summer will have barely any effect on the earth’s climate.

And even if Obama decided to place some of his rapidly swelling political capital on the line and make a pledge for emissions reductions at Copenhagen, it wouldn’t be legally binding, because any treaty must be ratified by the U.S. Senate, which has already demonstrated its hostility to the less ambitious Waxman-Markey bill.

If all of this isn’t promising enough, Copenhagen delegates’ support from their constituencies for making firm commitments to reduce emissions will be diluted by several other factors.  One is the laughable hypocrisy on display in conference attendees’ lavish, luxury-filled, CO2 emission-intensive accommodations and entertainments.  The UK Telegraph documents that the summit, including jet and limousine travel, “will create a total of 41,000 tonnes of ‘carbon dioxide equivalent,’” about the same as the daily emissions of 30 smaller countries.  This is even after Al Gore canceled his talk in Copenhagen and the extra fuel required to fly him there was subtracted from the total.  read more »

I just finished reading Sarah Palin's autobiography.  The whole book--not just Chapter 1 as Deborah J. Saunders, who wrote a dismissive review on Townhall last week, obviously did.   Not just the juicy campaign parts that the media immediately pounced on.  As Sarah herself might say, the whole kit and caboodle.

I'll give you my appraisal up front: it's a great book.   I'd read her biography by Kaylene Johnson last year so I already had a good idea of who the real Sarah Palin is.  Palin's book is about 400 pages and the first half mirrored in greater depth the events of Sarah's life before she burst on the national stage in August 2008.

The second half deals with the vice presidential campaign, the events up to her resignation from the governorship and the writing of the book itself.  The campaign parts are fascinating to someone who's never been on the inside of a political campaign but who did watch the events of 2008 unfold.  It is very honest, complimentary to many and not so much to others.  She doesn't give herself a pass either.  It's been written that she plays the victim. I didn't read it that way at all.

I can't help but contrast this biography with those of Barack Obama.   She didn't have a ghost-writer and she sticks to the facts.  That's a big difference between the conservative mindset with an emphasis on facts and rationality and the liberal one with an emphasis on feelings and where the truth is relative.

I would also say that this is an important book.  Read it and reflect on it.  If, when you finish reading this book, you still don't understand or agree with Sarah Palin, then you don't really understand or agree with the ideal of America.   She's as American as apple pie: a strong faith and a belief in fiscal responsibility, limited government, and the unlimited potential of the American people.

If, like most Americans, you doubt scientists will ever demonstrate a direct link between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming, try wrapping your mind around any of the following deeply implausible scenarios in the wake of the recent Climategate scandal:

(1) The Climate Research Unit at the UK’s University of East Anglia, origin of the thousands of pages of leaked e-mails and computer code two weeks ago, will honor requests to obtain the CRU data used to produce results showing steady global temperature increases over the past 150 years.

Phil Jones, head of CRU, who resigned yesterday in light of the fraud, once e-mailed U.S. colleague Michael Mann, “[D]on’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them…  If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone…  We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.”

(2) The CRU has its own data it has collected over the years and the programs to use this data to replicate its previously published results, or can figure out how to reproduce these programs.

Here are a few nuggets from the infamous “HARRY_READ_ME” text file containing three years’ worth of notes (2006-2009) documenting one CRU scientist’s attempt to reconstruct published temperature data using the center’s poorly documented datasets and computer code:

“I immediately found a mistake! Scanning forward to 1951 was done with a loop that, for completely unfathomable reasons, didn’t include months! So we read 50 grids instead of 600!!!”  read more »

In their quest to pass health care reform legislation, Democrats have been cheating death, robbing Peter to pay Paul, taking candy from babies, lying through their teeth, moving the goalposts, and burning the candle at both ends.  It is about to catch up with them.

If I were an editorial cartoonist, I’d depict Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi as Tarzan and Jane, swinging through the forest, dangling a ragtag bundle of Congressional Democrats in a net trap, eking their way from one tree to the next as each vine snaps behind them, nearly sending them to their death in the jaws of lions below.

Here are a few of the nine lives Congressional Democrats have used up in recent months:

(1)    The House version of the bill passed in a squeaker of a vote, 220-215, three weeks ago.  Two Democrats voting the other way would have killed the bill (not 3, since Republican Representative Joseph Cao cast his vote for the bill only once he was sure it would pass without him).

(2)    The Senate agreed to begin debate on its version of the bill in another squeaker of a vote this weekend, which was preceded by a $300,000,000 payoff to Senator Mary Landrieu for Louisiana (thanks for the revised figure, Mary!).  As Dana Milbank noted, this sum is 20 times the price of the original Louisiana Purchase, which at least bought us 14 states.  As The New York Post observed, based on Louisiana Representative William Jefferson’s recent 13-year sentence for accepting a $100,000 bribe, Landrieu should spend the next 39,000 years in jail.  read more »

In the wake of the senate vote Saturday night, it's a fair question to ask.  The People are against the Democrats' health care bill be the widest margins ever: 38% to 56% according to a Rasmussen poll released today.  There has never been a majority in favor of it and the more people find out about it the less we like it.

Yet the Democrats seem not to care in the slightest.  Their idea, communicated back in January, is "We counted in November and we won."  They imply they are free to do whatever they want.  In a parliamentary democracy that may work:  The voters typically endorse a party and it's platform which it then enacts.  In this country, however, the Constitution limits what any party may do.  We also have a tradition of compromise and bipartisanship often lacking in parliamentary systems like Italy and Israel where smaller, ideological parties struggle to form and maintain majorities.

It should be clear to the American people by now that the Democrats have changed the game and have an agenda that has nothing to do with creating jobs, fixing the economy, or fighting the war on terror.  The things Americans thought they were voting for have taken a back seat to a so-called "Stimulus" bill, health care legislation, cap-and-trade and any number of initiatives designed primarily to ensure they never get voted out of office.  read more »

There are some (I think) humorous emails and bumper stickers going around referencing Psalm 109:8:

May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership.

Good for a chuckle--especially when considering the Constitutional line of succession--unless you're a committed leftist.  The Huffington Post reports on this "latest...thinly-veiled..death threats."  I wrote about this on September 18: only Republican presidents get shot.  Curiously, the National Archives piece I looked up refers to Lincoln and McKinley being "shot"; only Kennedy was "assassinated."  Be that as it may, they all died of their wounds.

In the late 1980s my wife was working in the county library system in Maryland.  One day a young man offered the observation that President Reagan "deserved" to be shot because he was taking away "our welfare rights."  You see, the left thinks in those terms.  The idea that conservatives would do the same is another case of the myopic mirror-imaging that the left engages in.

When do conservatives commit physical, political violence?  Discounting the Revolution itself one could start with the Whiskey Rebellion against taxes under Washington and include John Brown's Raid against Harper's Ferry in 1859.  After that?  Don't think so.  Let me know if you can think of any.  read more »

Early in American history, one was pretty much free to do as one saw fit on one's property so long as it was moral especially if one lived in a rural area where one's actions were not likely to encroach upon the sensibilities of one's neighbors. However, now it seems the landholdings of the United States in general and private property in specific are for everyone else to decide what to do with except the one to which it is titled.

As of September 1, 2009, the Virginia Department of Game and Fisheries has announced that it is illegal to artificially feed the deer through the first Saturday in January. This regulation is part of a program to keep the number of deer in check.

In other words, it is hoped that a number of them will starve to death during the winter months. If pristine, untouched nature is to be the standard by which our actions and decisions are to be judged, then shouldn't we speak plainly as to the policy's goals and intentions?

While the government has every right to set policy as to what it wants done on public lands and in state parks, private property holders should be able to do in regards to this issue on their own lots and in their own yards what they themselves believe best. Not everyone is going to feed the deer to begin with.

It should be noted that this bureaucratic mandate will go beyond regulating one single activity. According to a story posted at Harrisonburg Daily News Record titled "Deer Feeding Now Illegal", those with deer eating the seed spilled from birdfeeders will be ordered to temporarily take their feeders down.

Seems unwanted deer aren't the only extraneous animals authorities hope will die off and I am not talking about the birds. Obama's healthcare plan hopes that the aged demographic will simply throw in the towel with little resistance so that resources might be directed towards preferred groups such as illegal aliens.  read more »

This is really just too good to pass up.  FoxNews  quotes a Washington Post article yesterday:

In the wake of last summer's deadly Metro crash in Washington, D.C., the Obama administration reportedly plans to propose that subway and light-rail systems across the country fall under federal oversight.

What's this all about?  Two Metro trains crashed on June 22nd, killing nine people.  Here's an AP story on the crash.  The current Washington Post story quotes Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood as saying:

After the train crash, we were all sitting around here scratching our heads, saying, 'Hey, we've got to do something about this'," LaHood said. "And we discovered that there's not much we could do, because the law wouldn't allow us to do it.

What to do?  Pity the poor Transportation Secretary, hamstrung by the law.   Think, think, think.  I know!  Let's have federal oversight of all mass transit systems.  That's the ticket!  read more »