Cheney and the CIA
editorial

President Obama's reluctance to investigate the possible legal wrongdoings of his predecessor is understandable, if unfortunate.

Understandable because such an investigation would heighten partisan rancor and detract from Obama's broad, forward-looking agenda.

Unfortunate because evidence continues to mount that the Bush administration abused executive authority and trampled the law.

Obama's reluctance may need to be overcome to get to the bottom of the latest revelation: Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly ordered the CIA to keep a secret counterterrorism program shielded from congressional oversight.

Details of the program are murky ... [link]

Officials hear 50 solutions to poverty
By Mason Adams, Roanoke Times

Finding problems associated with poverty during this national recession isn't difficult.

On Saturday, state officials visited 25 localities around the commonwealth seeking a much rarer commodity: solutions to those problems.

They found 50 at Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke, where individuals and representatives from local government and nonprofit agencies stepped up to give two-minute spiels on their ideas.

The suggestions -- which ranged from streamlining the welfare application process to reinstating the 36 percent annual interest rate cap on payday and car title loans -- will be compiled by the Virginia Poverty Reduction Taskforce into a report that will be delivered to Gov. Tim Kaine and the two major-party candidates for governor. Kaine will subsequently make recommendations to the Virginia General Assembly, probably by this fall.

Many of the suggested poverty solutions involve more state funding, which will likely be a tough sell during a time when lawmakers have been faced with cutting programs and services because of shrinking revenues.

TAP [Total Action Against Poverty] President Ted Edlich called for universal health care and better regional cooperation.

Correlli Rasheed, who also works with TAP, said that public transportation should be expanded and that rights to felons should be more quickly restored once they leave prison.

Jo Nelson, who helps with TAP's work force-development program, said that welfare requirements should be changed to allow ... [link]

When it's all whittled down, as few as 12 million are unable to buy insurance — less than 4% of a population of 305 million. For this we need to nationalize 17% of our nation's $14 trillion economy and change the current care that 89% like?

Why We Must Ration Health Care

Rationing health care means getting value for the billions we are spending by setting limits on which treatments should be paid for from the public purse. If we ration we won’t be writing blank checks to pharmaceutical companies for their patented drugs, nor paying for whatever procedures doctors choose to recommend. When public funds subsidize health care or provide it directly, it is crazy not to try to get value for money. The debate over health care reform in the United States should start from the premise that some form of health care rationing is both inescapable and desirable. Then we can ask, What is the best way to do it?

As a first take, we might say that the good achieved by health care is the number of lives saved. But that is too crude. The death of a teenager is a greater tragedy than the death of an 85-year-old, and this should be reflected in our priorities. We can accommodate that difference by calculating the number of life-years saved, rather than simply the number of lives saved. If a teenager can be expected to live another ... [link]

Pared-Down Episcopal Church Is Looking to Grow Through ‘Inclusivity’
By Laurie Goodstein, New York Times

Anaheim, Calif. — The Episcopal Church is betting its future on the hope that there are more young people out there like Will Hay.

Mr. Hay, 17, was one of the youngest voting delegates at the church’s 10-day triennial convention, which ended Friday. He has stuck with his church, even when the priest and most of the parishioners in his conservative San Diego parish quit the Episcopal Church two years ago in protest of its liberal moves, particularly the approval in 2003 of an openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson. Mr. Hay has helped rebuild his parish, which was left with 48 people and has since drawn nearly 100 new members.

Mr. Hay is no left-wing ideologue, and in fact fears that some of the convention’s landmark decisions last week may alienate even more conservatives. The church’s convention voted not to stand in the way if another gay bishop were elected and to allow for the blessing of same-sex couples.

But Mr. Hay was not troubled by those things. And he believes that the church can grow by emphasizing “inclusivity,” the favorite buzzword of Episcopalians.

Whether Episcopalians really can regenerate a church based on youth and “inclusivity” remains to be seen. [link]

Captive G.I. on Video by Taliban
By the Associated Press

Washington (AP) — The American soldier who disappeared June 30 in eastern Afghanistan, and was later confirmed to have been captured, appears on a video posted Saturday to a Web site by the Taliban, two United States defense officials said.

The soldier is shown in the 28-minute video with his head shaved and the start of a beard. He is sitting, wearing a nondescript gray outfit.

American defense officials confirmed that the man in the video is the captured soldier.

The soldier says the date is July 14. He says he was captured when he lagged behind on a patrol. [link]

Wirth delivers ‘extreme words’ on climate change to energy execs at COGA conference
By Cathy Proctor, Denver Business Journal

Calling his own speech “extreme words,” Tim Wirth, a former U.S. senator from Colorado and now head of the United Nations Foundation, told natural gas executives Wednesday they are running out of time to position their industry as part of the solution to climate change.

“You don’t have the right to sit back and do nothing [about climate change],” Wirth told a crowd of nearly 2,000 people at the Colorado Convention Center, responding to a question about what the industry should do about climate change legislation in the U.S. Congress. “We are in very deep trouble, the edge of catastrophe, and you can help.” [link]

With Push Toward Renewable Energy, California Sets Pace for Solar Power
By Felicity Barringer, New York Times

San Francisco — A decade ago, only 500 rooftops in California boasted solar panels that harvest the sun’s energy. Today, there are nearly 50,000 solar-panel installations in the state, according to a report to be issued Thursday by the research and lobbying group Environment California.

As a result, California, the longtime national leader in solar energy, has a capacity of more than 500 megawatts of solar power at peak periods in the early afternoon — the same as a major power plant.

The solar capacity in California grew by a third from 2007 to 2008. [link]

But even with the increases of the last decade, solar power is a pipsqueak among energy sources; it represents about one-quarter of 1 percent of California’s total energy capacity, according to the California Energy Commission. Nationally, according to the Energy Information Administration, it represents about 0.02 percent of total capacity, but those federal figures are incomplete: they reflect only centralized facilities, not distributed rooftop installations.

Harkin wants ethanol measures in climate bill
By Philip Brasher, Des Moines Register

Washington, D.C. - Sen. Tom Harkin said he wants Congress to use a climate bill to force auto companies to make new cars and trucks capable of running on 85 percent ethanol as well as conventional gasoline.

"We own the automobile companies. Why not? I think that will be an easy one," Harkin said Thursday, referring to the government interests in Chrysler and General Motors. [link]

Credit the Virginia GOP for persistence if nothing else. Like a dog worrying a bone, Republicans have seized on the notion that Gov. Tim Kaine is spending too much time as head of the Democratic National Committee, neglecting his elective office as a result.

Their strategy is transparent. Kaine has been a popular and effective governor, like Gov. Mark Warner. Democrat Creigh Deeds is running as the heir apparent to that legacy of good government -- a strategy that worked for Kaine in 2005.

Uh, how did we get from Kaine's travel to Kaine's popularity and effectiveness to Mark Warner's popularity and effectiveness to Creigh Deeds being - "apparently" - the heir to Kaine's and Warner's "good governance" and, we can assume, popularity and effectiveness?

My neck hurts from the whiplash.

Rewrite!

Coal miners boycotting Tennessee tourist sites
By Roger Alford, Associated Press Writer

Frankfort, Ky. (AP) -- Angry Appalachian coal miners are refusing to vacation in Tennessee because they say one of that state's political leaders wants to eliminate needed jobs by banning mountaintop removal.

Republican U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander is sponsoring legislation that would bar coal companies from the controversial mining practice that involves blasting away mountaintops to unearth coal and dumping dirt, rock and trees into the valleys beneath. Such a ban would effectively halt the destructive form of mining.

Miners in Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Virginia are taking part in the protest, said Roger Horton, director of Citizens for Coal, the pro-coal advocacy group that organized the boycott.

Horton, a miner on a mountaintop-removal operation in West Virginia, said some 5,000 coal miners already have joined the week-old boycott, which he hopes will spread to involve all of the nation's 81,000 coal miners.

The boycott will continue, Horton said, until Alexander relents. [link]

From the beginning of this confirmation process, I've said that Americans expect one thing when they walk into a court room, whether it's a traffic court or the Supreme Court -- and that's equal treatment under the law. Over the years, Americans have accepted significant ideological differences in the kinds of men and women that various presidents have nominated to the Supreme Court. But one thing Americans will never tolerate in a nominee is a belief that some groups are more deserving of a fair shake than others. Nothing could be more offensive to the American sensibility than that. Judge Sotomayor is a fine person with an impressive story and a distinguished background. But above all else, a judge must check his or her personal or political agenda at the courtroom door and do justice even-handedly, as the judicial oath requires.

Judge Sotomayor's record of written statements suggests an alarming lack of respect for the notion of equal justice, and therefore, in my view, an insufficient willingness to abide by the judicial oath. This is particularly important when considering someone for the Supreme Court since, if she were confirmed, there would be no higher court to deter or prevent her from injecting into the law the various disconcerting principles that recur throughout her public statements. For that reason, I will oppose her nomination.

Even as Democratic leaders and the White House insisted that the nation was closer than ever to landmark changes in the health care system, they faced basic questions about whether some of their proposals might do more harm than good.

Democrats had three reasons for concern. The director of the Congressional Budget Office warned Thursday that the legislative proposals so far would not slow the growth of health spending, a crucial goal for Mr. Obama as he also tries to extend insurance to more than 45 million Americans who lack it.

Second, even with House committees working in marathon sessions this week, it was clear that Democrats could not meet their goal of passing bills before the summer recess without barreling over the concerns of Republicans and ending any hope that such a major issue could be addressed in a bipartisan manner.

Third, a growing minority of Democrats have begun to express reservations about the size, scope and cost of the legislation, the expanded role of the federal government and the need for a raft of new taxes to pay for it all. The comments suggest that party leaders may not yet have the votes to pass the legislation.

Democrats put their Representatives up for sale
By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air

How did Democrats manage to win a narrow 219-212 victory on cap-and-tax three weeks ago? According to Glenn Thrush at Politico, they did it the old-fashioned way — they bought the votes. Democratic leadership in the House dumped tens of thousands of dollars into the campaign coffers of Democratic waverers on the expansive and expensive energy-industry controls:

Three House Democratic leaders who were whipping members on the climate change bill gave tens of thousands in campaign cash to party moderates around the time of the 219-212 vote on June 26, according to Federal Election Commission records.

It’s impossible to tell if that torrent of cash was an attempt to schmear wavering Democrats — or just part of the usual cash dump made by leaders on the eve of the June 30 quarterly fundraising deadline.

Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) doled out $28,000 to reps who eventually voted yes on June 24, two days before the big vote — on a day when House leaders were doing some heavy-duty arm-twisting.

Clyburn recipients who voted for the bill included a who’s-who of battleground district Dems: Steve Driehaus, D-OH ($2,000); Martin Heinrich, D-NM ($2,000); Suzanne Kosmas, D-Fla. ($4,000); Betsy Markey, D-Colo. ($2,000); Carol Shea-Porter, D-NH ($2,000), Baron Hill, D-Ind. ($2,000); Alan Grayson, D-Fla. ($2,000); Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa ($2,000); Jim Himes, D-Conn. ($2,000); Mary Jo Kilroy, D-OH ($2,000); Kurt Schrader, D-Ore. ($2,000); Jerry McNerney, D-Calif. ($2,000) and Tom Perriello, D-Va. ($2,000).

Pelosi and Clyburn claim that the donations were just the normal end-of-quarter cash dumps that leadership routinely give their members. Perhaps, but the pattern of giving more than 16 months before the next election speaks to a certain strategy on pending legislation. While the two did contribute to eventual opponents of the bill, the money went in this week primarily to swing voters on the issue, which makes it look less routine and more like they only mostly succeeded in buying support for the bill.

When Democratic leadership has been whipping the vote for weeks and suddenly shows up with bags of money for the waverers, calling that “routine” may be more indicting than Pelosi understands. [link] [my emphasis]

Commerce Secretary: Americans ‘Need to Pay’ for Chinese Emissions
By Keith Johnson, Wall Street Journal

yesterday, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said something amazing—U.S. consumers should pay for part of Chinese greenhouse-gas emissions. From Reuters:

“It’s important that those who consume the products being made all around the world to the benefit of America — and it’s our own consumption activity that’s causing the emission of greenhouse gases, then quite frankly Americans need to pay for that,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

The idea that rich-country consumers should pick up the tab for some of China’s industrial emissions has been gaining currency lately—but not from within the Obama administration.

Secretary Locke’s statement could open up a new can of worms—right when China’s actions on energy and the environment are proving so crucial to mustering support among wavering senators for the administration’s big cap-and-trade bill. [link]

Despite pleas, state to shutter I-81 rest areas
By Jeff Sturgeon, Roanoke Times

In spite of continuing appeals not to do so, Virginia will close almost half of its interstate rest areas early next week, state highway officials said Thursday.

The Virginia Department of Transportation will close two facilities along Interstate 81 in Southwest Virginia on Tuesday morning, the first about an hour after daybreak and the second once crews get the first one sealed up.

Unless it lines up private businesses to operate them, an option Virginia is seeking federal permission to pursue, the shuttered rest areas are scheduled to be razed by 2011, state Transportation Commissioner David Ekern has said. [link]

Solar cycle affecting global climate, say scientists
domain-b.com

Research led by scientists at the National Science Foundation-funded National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, has shown that maximum solar activity and its aftermath have impacts on Earth similar to that caused by ocean currents La Niña and El Niño in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

The research, while establishing a key link between the solar cycle and global climate, may pave the way toward predictions of temperature and precipitation patterns at certain times during the approximately 11-year solar cycle.

The new paper, along with an earlier one by Meehl and colleagues, shows that as the Sun reaches maximum activity, it heats cloud-free parts of the Pacific Ocean enough to increase evaporation, intensify tropical rainfall and the trade winds, and cool the eastern tropical Pacific. [link]

CBO Chief: Health Bills To Increase Federal Costs
By David Clarke and Edward Epstein, Congressional Quarterly Staff

The health care overhauls released to date would increase, not reduce, the burgeoning long-term health costs facing the government, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf said Thursday.

That is not a message likely to sit well with congressional Democrats or the Obama administration, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., said Thursday she thinks lawmakers can find ways to wring more costs out of the health system as they continue work on their bills.

The Democrats and President Obama have cited two goals in their overhaul proposals — expanding coverage to the estimated 47 million Americans who currently lack it and bringing down long-term costs because the growth in Medicare and Medicaid spending threatens to swamp the federal budget in coming years.

Under questioning from Chairman Kent Conrad , D-N.D., Elmendorf told the Senate Budget Committee that the congressional proposals released so far do not meet that second test. [link]

Groups oppose second nuclear reactor at Watts Bar
By Kristen Letsinger, KnoxNews

Several environmental groups are banding together in petitioning the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to stop TVA from operating a second reactor at Watts Bar nuclear plant.

The Sierra Club, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, the Tennessee Environmental Council, the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and We the People Inc. on Wednesday asked the NRC for permission to intervene against TVA's bid for an operating license at the Rhea County site.

The groups contend the Unit 2 reactor could harm water resources, including the Tennessee River, and risk public health and safety because of ... [blah blah blah] [link]

Rosen Was Right
By Jennifer Rubin, Commentary maganzine

After two days of Sotomayor testimony I thought of Jeffrey Rosen’s piece on Sotomayor back in May (before he had to backpedal and support her so as not to embarrass the “team”). I don’t think much of his temperament criticism, but his analysis of her legal and intellectual capabilities seems exactly on the money.

[lengthy Rosen quote snipped]

Has she said anything to dispel these concerns? Whether examining her verbal skills, her command of the law or her intellectual acuity, I come away thinking she is one of the least impressive Supreme Court nominees to come along in recent memory. Judge Robert Bork was obviously not everyone’s ideal judge, but the man’s intellectual prowess was undeniable and he refused to lie about his views. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was frankly charming and sharp-witted in her testimony and could march the senators through the evolution of a number of strains of jurisprudence.

Whether you agreed with their philosophy or not, you had the sense with the Clinton, Reagan, and George W. Bush nominees (yes, I leave Souter off the list) that there was good reason to put them on the Court. You listened for a day or even and hour and said, “Yes, that’s a Supreme Court Justice.” It was hard to dispute, even if you disagreed with one or another on his or her judicial methodology, that the nominee was bringing some intellectual heft.

Does anyone really have that sense from Sotomayor? And all of this is made worse, much worse, by her ham-handed efforts to distance herself from her own speeches and deny her own involvement with PRLDEF.

Rosen was trying to warn his liberal compatriots that they could do “better” than Sotomayor. He was right and should get some credit for his effort. [link]

Gov. Kaine, Howell urge new Va. site for Wal-Mart
By Steve Szkotak, Associated Press Writer

Richmond, Va. (AP) -- Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and the speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates are encouraging Wal-Mart and Orange County officials to find an alternative site for a Supercenter proposed near a Civil War battlefield.

The 138,000-square-foot store is planned near the Wilderness battlefield, which Kaine and Speaker William J. Howell said "ranks supremely important" among the many Civil War battlefields in Virginia.

"Every acre of battlefield land that is destroyed means a loss of open space and missed tourism opportunities, and it closes one more window for future generations to better understand our national story," Kaine and Howell said in the later [sic] dated July 13 to Lee Frame, chairman of the Board of Supervisors. [link]

House Members Being Hammered Over Waxman-Markey
By Iain Murray, Hot Air

I'm hearing that the popular reaction to the passage of the Waxman-Markey electricity tax bill in the House has blown House members away. The public outrage is really hurting those who voted for it, and that's why the bill has been "parked" ... in the Senate. Very good sign. We need that sort of public pressure to defeat this monstrosity, and similarly for the health-care plans. If these two overreaches go down, Obama's political capital will be spent. How often has a president become a lame duck by his own actions within a year of taking office? [link]

Once-Trendy Crocs Could Be on Their Last Legs
By Ylan Q. Mui, Washington Post Staff Writer

Crocs were born of the economic boom.

The colorful foam clogs appeared in 2002, just as the country was recovering from a recession. Brash and bright, they were a cheap investment (about $30) that felt good and promised to last forever. Former president George W. Bush wore them. Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler wore them. Your grandma wore them. They roared along with the economy, mocked by the fashion world but selling 100 million pairs in seven years.

Then the boom times went bust, and Crocs went to the back of the closet.

The company had expanded to meet demand, but financially pressed customers cut back. Last year the company lost $185.1 million, slashed roughly 2,000 jobs and scrambled to find money to pay down millions in debt. Now it's stuck with a surplus of shoes, and its auditors have wondered if it can stay afloat.

Rachel Weingarten, a trend and marketing expert, has relegated Crocs to the wasteland of the comfort-shoe aisle. Maybe in a decade nostalgia will set in, said Weingarten, author of "Career and Corporate Cool." Then a pair of hot-pink Crocs dug from the back of the closet might inspire misty-eyed memories: "Remember when we had ugly, Flintstone-looking feet?" [link]

Episcopal Church Chooses to "Walk Apart" from Anglican Communion
By Nicholas T. Wright, Washington Post

In the slow-moving train crash of international Anglicanism, a decision taken in California has finally brought a large coach off the rails altogether. The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church (TEC) in the United States has voted decisively to allow in principle the appointment, to all orders of ministry, of persons in active same-sex relationships. This marks a clear break with the rest of the Anglican Communion.

Both the bishops and deputies (lay and clergy) of TEC knew exactly what they were doing. They were telling the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other "instruments of communion" that they were ignoring their plea for a moratorium on consecrating practicing homosexuals as bishops. [link]

It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law. [my emphasis]

"It's Not An Option," July 16, 2009

Massachusetts in Suit Over Cost of Universal Care
By Abby Goodnough, New York Times

Boston — A hospital that serves thousands of indigent Massachusetts residents sued the state on Wednesday, charging that its costly universal health care law is forcing the hospital to cover too much of the expense of caring for the poor.

The hospital, Boston Medical Center, faces a $38 million deficit for the fiscal year ending in September, its first loss in five years. The suit says the hospital will lose more than $100 million next year because the state has lowered Medicaid reimbursement rates and stopped paying Boston Medical “reasonable costs” for treating other poor patients.

The central charge in the suit is that the state has siphoned money away from Boston Medical to help pay the considerable cost of insuring all but a small percentage of residents.

Low-income residents, who have benefited most from expanded access to health care, receive state-subsidized insurance, one of the most expensive aspects of the state plan. But rapidly rising costs and the battered economy have caused more problems than the state and supporters of the 2006 law — including Boston Medical — anticipated. [link]

Good news: Sotomayor confuses “eminent” with “imminent” — twice
By Allahpundit, Hot Air

Excruciating to watch, and apparently not her only malaprop of the day. According to Ed Whelan, she confused “providence” with “province” and said “story of knowledge” when she meant “store of knowledge,” too. If the boss routinely made embarrassing mistakes like this on her blog, it’d be a running joke among the nutroots; as it is, the fact that a federal appellate judge turned Supreme Court justice is making them at a congressional hearing will doubtless go blissfully unremarked upon. Although to be fair, she only ever claimed to be wise, not to have the vocabulary of, say, the average 10th-grader. Awesome, awesome pick, Barry.

Anyway. Doubtless we’ll soon be told that it’s racist somehow to even mention this, so I preemptively denounce both myself and Whelan for noticing it. [link]

A 9-month wait for arthritis treatment: Delay can mean a lifetime of agony for victims
By Daniel Martin, London Daily Mail

Thousands of rheumatoid arthritis sufferers face a lifetime of agony because they are not being treated quickly enough, a report says.

Guidelines state that patients should receive treatment within three months of the first symptoms appearing.

But the average wait is nine months - and GPs are not trained well enough to know what help to offer.

GPs [General Practitioners] lack the specialist knowledge required to diagnose the condition quickly, and on average it takes four visits before a patient is referred to a specialist for diagnosis and treatment, the report adds. [link]

Is Regina Benjamin too fat to be surgeon general?
By Frances Kissling, Salon.com

By all accounts Surgeon General nominee Dr. Regina Benjamin is an extraordinary woman. She is an African-American family doctor who has spent most of her ...

The only problem seems to be that some people think the face is too fat.

From her photos, it appears that Dr. Benjamin will need a generous size 18 military uniform. The anti-fat brigade has been arguing in various online comments sections about her BMI and whether or not the term obese applies. These chattering masses wonder if a country plagued by obesity should have an above average-weight woman speaking to public health.

For me the answer is a resounding yes. This country is full of above-average weight women and children struggling for dignity as well as to lose weight. [link]

Past warming shows gaps in climate knowledge - study
By David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Reuters

Singapore (Reuters) - A dramatic warming of the planet 55 million years ago cannot be solely explained by a surge in carbon dioxide levels, a study shows, highlighting gaps in scientists' understanding of impacts from rapid climate change.

During an event called the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, global temperatures rose between 5 and 9 degrees Celsius within several thousand years. The world at that time was already warmer than now with no surface ice. [link]

Massachusetts Takes a Step Back From Health Care for All
By Abby Goodnough, New York Times

Boston — The new state budget in Massachusetts eliminates health care coverage for some 30,000 legal immigrants to help close a growing deficit, reversing progress toward universal coverage just as Congress looks to the state as a model for overhauling the nation’s health care system.

Gov. Deval Patrick has proposed restoring $70 million to the program, which would partly restore the immigrants’ coverage. But legislative leaders have balked, saying vital programs for other groups would have to be cut as a result. The cut, which would affect only nondisabled adults from 18 to 65 years old, would take effect in August unless the legislature approves Mr. Patrick’s proposal.

Because of its three-year-old law, Massachusetts has the country’s lowest percentage of uninsured residents: 2.6 percent, compared with a national average of 15 percent. The law requires that almost every resident have insurance, and to meet that goal, the state subsidizes coverage for those earning up to three times the federal poverty level, or $66,150 for a family of four. [link]

Record Low Temperatures Hit Northeast
Now! Hampshire

As politicians in Washington, DC debate what to do about global warming, the Northeast has been hit with record low temperatures this morning.

According to ABC News, the cities of Binghamton and Rochester in New York and Hartford, CT experienced record lows for July today.

Meanwhile, here in the Granite State, temperatures in Concord fell to 47-degrees this morning, the lowest since 1940. Temperatures in Portsmouth came within one degree of the lowest ever in July. [link] [emphasis in the original]

Former CIA Director: No One Told Me Not To Tell Congress
By Mark Memmott, NPR

The man who ran the CIA from 2006 through January says he wasn't told by then-vice president Dick Cheney not to brief Congress about a covert program aimed at members of al-Qaida, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly reports.

Gen. Mike Hayden's statement is at odds with a New York Times report Sunday that said the CIA:

"Withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency's director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday."

Hayden tells Mary Louise that "I never felt I had any impediment in briefing Congress." [link]

It’s hard for me not to see it as a ploy by Democrats to distract from the fact that the stimulus bill is a dud, health care is going badly, and cap-and-trade looks like a disaster. The base always enjoys beating up on Cheney, and the press likes that stuff, too.

But, again, let me make sure I'm not missing something. Cheney ordered the CIA to look into sending out squads to kill al-Qaeda leaders after 9/11. Call me crazy, but that’s what I assumed they’d been doing all along. I’m far more scandalized that such plans haven’t been up and running for eight years than I am by the fact that Congress wasn’t briefed on a plan that had never been put into action. (I can only hope the plans were tabled because it was determined that cruise missiles and UAVs worked better than CIA assassins).

So what exactly is the fuss about? Cheney, with the backing of Congress, looked into killing people — who were very much in need of being killed — but the program was never operationalized and Congress is P.O.’d that they weren’t briefed further on a program that wasn’t operational?

Please don’t look at the socialized medicine in the corner; we’re hunting Cheneys.

Great stuff.

Why China beats the U.S.

We know China is already our principal banker, to the tune of nearly $1 trillion. As Mr. Obama's record spending and borrowing continues -- he'll be the greatest bond salesman in American history -- our financial reliance on China grows daily. But that's not all.

China also surpassed the United States as the world's biggest automaker in the first half of this year, with June sales soaring 36.5 percent from a year earlier. The Chinese registered 6.1 million car sales for the first half of the year. That way outpaced American sales, which were just 4.8 million.

Also, China has no capital-gains tax. It only has a 15 percent to 20 percent corporate tax. The United States, on the other hand, is raising its cap-gains tax rate to 20 percent.¹ It's also increasing its top personal tax rates.

In fact, the scheduled income-tax increase along with a much-discussed 4 percent health care surtax will balloon the top U.S. tax rate all the way to 51 percent. And there's more. To finance so-called health care reform, congressional Democrats are talking about raising the tax rate on capital gains and dividends by another 1.5 percent while installing a value-added tax (VAT) that would begin at 1.5 percent.

So top tax rates in the United States may edge into the mid-50 percent range.

Here's the clincher: Year-to-date, Dow Jones stocks are off 8 percent, while China's stocks are up 71 percent. The world index is up 4 percent. Emerging markets are up 25 percent. They're all beating us. None of this is good. [link]

Kaine asked to stall technology contract changes
By Michael Sluss, Roanoke Times

Richmond -- Senior state lawmakers have asked Gov. Tim Kaine not to alter terms of Virginia's computer services contract with Northrop Grumman before legislative panels complete their reviews of problems with the contract and the agency charged with implementing it.

The chairmen of the General Assembly's money committees and the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission sent the letter to Kaine on Monday, as the two panels probed issues surrounding the state's 10-year, $2.3 billion contract with Northrop Grumman to consolidate and manage the state's information technology services.

A Senate Finance subcommittee received new details about missed deadlines, billing errors and difficulties tracking inventory as the state works through its contract with Northrop Grumman. And a separate panel was told that the board overseeing the state's information technology agency improperly closed an April meeting in which members discussed aspects of the contract.

"It's a huge amount of money and it's not working the way we anticipated," said House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem. [link]

State employee loan program unveiled
By Michael Sluss, Roanoke Times

Richmond -- Virginia has established a short-term, emergency loan program for state employees that Gov. Tim Kaine said could become a model for providing alternatives to high-interest payday and car-title loans.

The Virginia State Employee Loan Program is designed to help qualified workers get small loans of $100 to $500 to help manage financial difficulties without relying on high-interest cash-advance businesses that are under growing scrutiny from state lawmakers.

"This program will allow our state employees to receive small loans without having to go to predatory lenders," Kaine said. "If the commonwealth can offer this kind of program, other large employers may consider similar initiatives of their own."

The loans will carry an annual interest of rate of nearly 25 percent and be repaid over six months through direct debit from the borrower's credit union account. [link]

Obama Picks New Surgeon General
By Lauren Neergaard, Associated Press

Washington (July 13) -- President Barack Obama nominated for surgeon general a rural family physician who has faced hurricanes, flood and fire to care for impoverished patients along Alabama's Gulf Coast.

Obama says Dr. Regina Benjamin understands the needs of the poor and uninsured, making her uniquely qualified to be America's doctor as his administration tries to revamp the health care system. [link]

From the BBC: “Almost 250 children under the age of five have died in a wave of intensely cold weather in Peru”. “This year, freezing temperatures have arrived almost 3 months earlier than usual.” From CBC news: “Temperatures dropped to a record low in Prince Edward Island overnight Tuesday (July 7 into July 8) with reports of frost throughout the province (in southeast Canada).” “…a meteorologist with Environment Canada said that to his knowledge, frost has never been reported before in July in Prince Edward Island.”

There have been individual record cold days in Chicago and Central Park, New York and New Zealand had the coldest May on record. In addition, the Potato Famine disease (Late Blight) is striking potato and tomato plants from Maine to Ohio and it’s threatening commercial and organic farms according to Reuters news, and according to Meg McGrath, a plant pathologist at Cornell University’s extension center in New York, “Late Blight has never occurred this early and this widespread in the United States.” The destructive disease can spread rapidly in cool, moist weather, infecting an entire field within days. The bottom line, which is causing me increasing concern every day, is that we’re seeing much colder weather in both hemispheres and its effects on humans and agriculture.

"Meteorologist Rich Puzzo, "Deadly and destructive cold...," July 13, 2009

The rapidly rising cost of health care, President Obama has said, is "a threat to our economy" and "a ticking time bomb for the federal budget." So a critical test of the health reform proposals lumbering through Congress is whether they defuse that bomb. The answer, so far, is no.

What would it take to fix that system?

[C]hanges in the current, irrational system of medical malpractice litigation might help lower costs. The evidence that costs are driven up by doctors practicing defensive medicine to protect themselves from lawsuits is scant. But higher malpractice premiums are passed on to consumers. Steps to reduce the prevalence of medical errors and to lower the cost of adjudicating claims -- perhaps by finding ways to screen out frivolous claims -- could also help bend the current dangerous trajectory of health-care costs.

Congress Needs A Read-The-Bill Bill
editorial

Lawmakers voted on the stimulus and global warming bills without having read either. Eventually they'll vote on health care legislation that could fund unrelated items. Time to end this systemic fraud.

The stimulus bill, signed into law less than a month after Barack Obama took office, reached 1,434 pages and will eventually cost the nation more than $1 trillion.

Waxman-Markey, the global warming bill, passed the House last month after Democrats added a 309-page amendment at 3 a.m. the morning before the vote, bringing that package of nonsense up to 1,200 or so pages.

Before it votes on health care, we have in mind another bill that Congress should take up. This one should be short, just a few words. It would be far more important to the future of the republic than fevered legislation establishing a public option for health care coverage or vainly trying to manipulate the climate.

This humble bill would simply require each member of Congress to sign a document saying he or she had read the legislation in full before they could vote for it.

Lawmakers should never vote for a bill they haven't read in its entirety. [link]

Hot-Air 'Consensus'
New York Post editorial

Memo to the cap-and-taxers on Capitol Hill, who want the United States to cripple its economy by "leading the way" on curbing carbon-gas emissions to halt global warming, or climate change, or whatever the term du jour is:

The Third World has no interest in bobbing along in your wake.

That's the message that came out of the latest G-8 summit in Italy, where President Obama hoped to reach a comprehensive international agreement on capping heat-trapping gases by mid-century.

Seems developing nations like China, Mexico, Brazil and India -- which are responsible for an increasingly greater share of global carbon emissions -- refused to endorse a proposal that would have them cut such emissions in half by 2050, with industrialized countries cutting theirs by 80%.

China, India, et al. understand that placing severe restrictions on their industrial output would bring their rise out of poverty to a shuddering halt -- and they have no intention of committing economic suicide.

No reasonable person would expect otherwise. [link]

Climate change: The sun and the oceans do not lie
By Christopher Booker, London Telegraph

The moves now being made by the world's political establishment to lock us into December's Copenhagen treaty to halt global warming are as alarming as anything that has happened in our lifetimes. Last week in Italy, the various branches of our emerging world government, G8 and G20, agreed in principle that the world must by 2050 cut its CO2 emissions in half. Britain and the US are already committed to cutting their use of fossil fuels by more than 80 per cent. Short of an unimaginable technological revolution, this could only be achieved by closing down virtually all our economic activity: no electricity, no transport, no industry. All this is being egged on by a gigantic publicity machine, by the UN, by serried ranks of government-funded scientists, by cheerleaders such as Al Gore, last week comparing the fight against global warming to that against Hitler's Nazis, and by politicians who have no idea what they are setting in train.

What makes this even odder is that the runaway warming predicted by their computer models simply isn't happening. Last week one of the four official sources of temperature measurement, compiled from satellite data by the University of Huntsville, Alabama, showed that temperatures have now fallen to their average level since satellite data began 30 years ago. [link] [my emphasis]

Beware of 'ration' scare tactics
editorial

Don't be fooled. Our system already rations care. Those who can afford it and those who, by happenstance of good geography, live near an abundance of specialists receive fine care. Those who can't afford it, like the 46 million uninsured Americans* and millions more of underinsured, have rationed care. So, too, do those living in rural or underserved areas where health care resources are scarce and the wait long.

Even those of us with company-provided health insurance often engage in battles with insurance companies that wish to ration the care our doctors order. And most Americans are just a pink slip away from severing our ties to affordable health care. [link]

Through the Norfolk-based Concealed Carry Institute, you can now meet Virginia's "competence" qualification for a concealed carry permit with a $39.95, one-hour online course, provided you can pass a 20-question true-or-false and multiple choice quiz at the end.

(If you fail, you're provided the correct answers and you get to retake the test for free).

I took the course Monday, passed that quiz and earned my certificate -- even though I've never touched a handgun in my life.

It is completely nuts that Virginia law would deem me competent enough with a handgun to get a concealed carry permit. [link]

What exactly is this guy frightened of?

The unknown.

"I've never touched a handgun in my life."

Now we understand.

Let's guess: Will a person or institution looking for a place to invest $1 billion seek opportunities in the United States, where policy decisions are deliberately increasing taxes, debt, regulations and the cost of energy, and soon will increase the cost of borrowing and hiring? Or will the investor look at, say, India. It is the least urbanized major country -- 70 percent of Indians live in rural areas, 50 percent on farms -- so the modernizing and productivity-enhancing movement from the countryside to the city is in its infancy. This nation of 1.2 billion people has a savings rate of 25 to 30 percent, and fewer than 20 million credit cards. Which nation, India or the United States, is apt to have the higher economic growth over the next decade?

Yet while government diminishes America's comparative advantages, liberals are clamoring for . . . higher taxes.

As "cap-and-trade" advocates tie their knickers in knots over so-called global warming, Mother Nature refuses to cooperate. Earth's temperatures continue a chill that began 11 years ago. As global cooling accelerates, global warmists kick, scream and push their pet theory -- just like little children who cover their ears and stomp their feet when older children tell them not to bother waiting up for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

"There has been no significant global warming since 1995, no warming since 1998, and global cooling for the past few years," former U.S. Senate Environment Committee spokesman Marc Morano writes at ClimateDepot.com. Citing metrics gathered by Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, Mr. Morano adds: "The latest global averaged satellite temperature data for June 2009 reveal yet another drop in Earth's temperature. ... Despite his dire warnings, the Earth has cooled 0.74 degrees F since former Vice President Al Gore released 'An Inconvenient Truth' in 2006."

So, to defeat so-called global warming, there is no need for the $864 billion Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, the Kyoto Protocols, elaborate new regulations or U.N. guidelines. Instead, let the cold times roll. [link]

Obama Says Economic Stimulus Plan Worked as Intended
By Edwin Chen, Bloomberg

July 11 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said his $787 billion stimulus bill “has worked as intended” as he pushed back against Republican criticism that his recovery program has failed to rescue the economy.

“It has already extended unemployment insurance and health insurance to those who have lost their jobs in this recession,” Obama, who is traveling today in Ghana, said in his weekly Saturday radio and Web address. “It has delivered $43 billion in tax relief to American working families and business.”

Obama spoke after stocks fell for a fourth week on concern that an economic recovery will be delayed. A government report last week showed that employers cut 467,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent, the highest since 1983.

Obama, in his speech, said the stimulus program is helping state governments save jobs. Were it not for the program, the president said, “state deficits would be nearly twice as large as they are now, resulting in tens of thousands of additional layoffs -- layoffs that would affect police officers, teachers, and firefighters.” [link]

"The jobs we create will be in businesses large and small across a wide range of industries. And they'll be the kind of jobs that don't just put people to work in the short term, but position our economy to lead the world in the long term." In addition, "90 percent of the jobs produced would be in the private sector, including hundreds of thousands in construction and manufacturing."

Not So Fast With Those Electric Cars
Investor's Business Daily editorial

A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another.

It's a beautiful theory — highways full of electric cars emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants after being plugged into an outlet in our garages overnight. The problem, according to a new Government Accountability Office report, is that the effort may only shift the problem somewhere else.

"If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?" asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: "Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy."

The GAO report says a plug-in compact car, if recharged at an outlet drawing its power from coal, provides a carbon dioxide savings of only 4% to 5%. If the feeling of saving the environment from driving an electric car causes people to drive more, that small amount of savings vanishes entirely.

Then there's a whole new problem of disposing of a new generation of batteries using lithium. [link]

Temperature of 64 sets chilly record for LI
Newsday Staff

A record chill - in July.

Thanks to a high of only 64, Thursday was the coldest July 9 since the National Weather Service began keeping records at Long Island MacArthur Airport in 1984.

The old record for the day's lowest high was set in 1984, when a high of 76 was reached.

More records may be broken or tied early Friday because a low of 56 is forecast. The record low for July 10 is 56. [link]

Supporters of public health option hold rally in Roanoke
By Sarah Bruyn Jones, Roanoke Times

Marnie Miller wasn't sure she supported having a public plan option included in health reform, but she knew she supported having the cost of health insurance lowered.

With that conviction, Miller joined a rally Thursday in Roanoke to ask Sen. Mark Warner to support a public plan as Congress considers how to restructure health insurance for the nation.

"I don't know much about the politics," Miller, of Roanoke, said. "But I don't have health care because of the high cost."

Neither Miller nor her five children have health insurance. When they are sick they go to the emergency room.

A registered nurse and a single parent, Miller said she earns too much for her children to qualify for health insurance through the state, but not enough to afford the high cost of insurance.

"It would be $1,000 a month," she said. [link]

Like Miller, many of the approximately two dozen people gathered Thursday couldn't articulate the exact details of what a public option entails. Instead they talked about the outcomes they are interested in seeing, such as making insurance more affordable and eliminating the increased expense associated with having a pre-existing condition.

In Retooled Health-Care System, Who Will Say No?
By Alec MacGillis, Washington Post Staff Writer

The question came from a Colorado neurologist. "Mr. President," he said at a recent forum, "what can you do to convince the American public that there actually are limits to what we can pay for with our American health-care system? And if there are going to be limits, who . . . is going to enforce the rules for a system like that?"

President Obama called it the "right question" -- then failed to answer it. This was not surprising: The query is emerging as the ultimate challenge in reining in health-care costs that now consume $2.5 trillion per year, or 16 percent of the economy. How will tough decisions be made about what to spend money on? In a country where "rationing" is a dirty word, who will say no?

Although Obama and his advisers have held up providers' spending patterns as the crux of the crisis, proposals in Washington go only so far in addressing the thorniest questions about who gets what care. Instead, cost-saving measures are focused on introducing a public insurance option to compete with private insurers, or on general cuts in Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals.

The bills being written would put new emphasis on evaluating treatments according to their "comparative effectiveness," or weighing the risks and benefits of different types of treatment for the same illness, but the bills stop short of incorporating cost-benefit analyses into the findings or of requiring that providers abide by conclusions.

The Democrats' caution has not kept Republicans from accusing them of embracing rationing. They raise the specter of the British agency, which goes by the acronym NICE, that decides whether that country's nationalized health-care system will pay for items such as costly cancer drugs that extend lives a few months on average.

"You're going to be saying to people, 'We're not going to care for you, because we've decided it's too expensive to care for you,' " said Robert E. Moffit of the right-leaning Heritage Foundation. [link]

Political opposition is not a hate crime
Washington Examiner editorial

[L]egislation quietly making its way through Congress would give the White House power to categorize political opponents as hate groups and even send Americans to detention centers on abandoned military bases.

Rep. Alcee Hastings - the impeached Florida judge Nancy Pelosi tried to install as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee until her own party members rebelled - introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill that gives Attorney General Eric Holder sole discretion to label groups that oppose government policy on guns, abortion, immigration, states' rights, or a host of other issues.

Another Hastings bill (HR 645) authorizes $360 million in 2009 and 2010 to set up "not fewer than six national emergency centers on military installations" capable of housing "a large number of individuals affected by an emergency or major disaster." But Section 2 (b) 4 allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to use the camps "to meet other appropriate needs" - none of which are specified. This is the kind of blank check that Congress should never, ever sign.

It's not paranoid to be extremely wary of legislation that would give two unelected government officials power to legally declare someone a "domestic terrorist" and send them to a government-run camp. [link]

Sotomayor Enters Confirmation Process with Miers-Like Numbers
Now! Hampshire

Sonia Sotomayor will begin her confirmation hearings next week with some of the highest levels of public opposition of any Supreme Court nominee in the last two decades, according to a new poll by the CNN and the Opinion Research Corporation.

n fact, only one nominee had a higher level of opposition: Harriet Miers, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005. Miers later withdrew her nomination under questions about her qualifications from both the political left and right.

Forty-seven percent of respondents to the poll say they would like to see the U.S. Senate vote to confirm Sotomayor versus forty-percent who say they would not. In the final CNN poll taken before Miers withdrew her nomination, forty-three percent of respondents said the Senate should oppose her confirmation.

No other recent nominee, not even Robert Bork, whose own nomination under President Ronald Reagan was scuttled, faced public opposition this severe. [link]

Voters Trust GOP More than Democrats on Eight of 10 Key Issues
Rasmussen Reports

Voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on eight out of 10 key electoral issues, including, for the second straight month, the top issue of the economy. They've also narrowed the gap on the remaining two issues, the traditionally Democratic strong suits of health care and education.

Most voters (52%) now trust Republicans more on the issue of taxes, also the highest level found in over two years. Only 36% trust Democrats more on taxes. A survey conducted at the end of June found that 39% of voters now expect their taxes to go up under Obama, the highest level of concern measured to date.

On national security, Republicans hold a 49% to 40% lead over Democrats. That’s down from a 15-point lead last month. [link]

Only four show up for health care rally
By NEMS Daily Journal

Tupelo - A health care rally drew only four people to U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker's office Thursday.

Sponsored by MoveOn, a national public policy advocacy organization, the rally was intended to support expanded health care for the poor.

Organizer James Hull said 100 e-mail invitations were sent but wasn't surprised by the turnout.

Hull said the location had nothing to do with Wicker personally. [link]

May the coldest on record, Niwa figures show
By Matt Stewart, Wairarapa Times-Age

Niwa [New Zealand's National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research] senior climate scientist Georgina Griffiths said May "broke records from one end of the country to the other - it was the coldest May on record", and there was nothing much to toast in the South Wairarapa wine village, which registered 69 percent of normal sunshine hours for May - the lowest figure for the town since records began.

June didn't fare much better as Ngawi racked up a record low topping the mercury at just 6.6C on June 16 - the lowest daily maximum temperature on the books. [link]

Writer Blasts Boucher For Energy Act Vote

Thank you Congressman Boucher – for nothing. Your incredibly calloused vote of “aye,” together with your comrades (in the best socialist sense) has enslaved present and future generations of our great nation by shackling them with the highest tax increase in the history with passage of the atrocious “cap and trade” bill.

You have failed miserably to uphold your oath of office to protect the people you represent, and instead, burdened them with a baseless, multi-trillion dollar debt.

This bill, an assault on prosperity by way of a repressive energy tax, will generate soaring inflationary costs on all goods and services, unbearable electricity costs, and a chaotic destruction of the economy. All to chase a meaningless 7/100 degree temperature reduction for planet Earth by the year 2050; maybe, but not really because both China and India – which together produce more than twice the CO2 of the United States – refuse to participate in this idiotic game. You could not sense 7/100 of a degree differential if you sat on it.

As with too many of your ilk, you have chosen to supinely follow the Democrat Party dictum like sheep, led by Nancy Pelosi who left her brains in San Francisco, rather than placing the USA first. You make a mockery of informed, representative government. [link]

Body found in van after Wythe Co. traffic stop
By Shawna Morrison, Roanoke Times

The body of a woman was found in the back of a van stopped for speeding in Wythe County on Thursday morning, Sheriff Doug King said, and her death has been classified as a homicide.

The woman appeared to have been shot multiple times, King said. He said the victim was an adult female, but he declined to release her name until her family has been notified.

Police believe the woman was killed in Taylorsville, N.C., where the van's driver, Lisa Church Damron, is from.

Wythe County Deputy Chris Coleman was on patrol on northbound Interstate 77 Thursday morning when he clocked the Ford Aerostar travelling 85 mph in a 65 mph zone, King said.

About 8:30 a.m., he pulled the van over near mile marker 30, two miles from the intersection of I-77 and Interstate 81.

The deputy determined that Damron and her husband, Jerry Wayne Damron, were under the influence of alcohol, King said. He charged Lisa Damron with driving under the influence and Jerry Damron with appearing drunk in public.

Because both of the van's occupants were under arrest, King said, the deputy was going to have the vehicle towed.

"As the deputy was taking an inventory of the van prior to having it towed," King said, "he discovered a dead body in the trunk." [link]

President Obama says a new public insurance plan is needed to keep private companies "honest." Well, to be honest, there's already a public plan, and it's hurtling toward insolvency.

The administration and congressional Democrats tell us they're working to reform health care in America. We'd be more inclined to believe them if they started by reforming a program that badly needs it. Instead, Medicare is the elephant in the room: Everybody knows it has huge problems, but few Democrats want to mention them. We can see why.

"Fix Medicare First," July 9, 2009

Obama says that his START will be a great boon, setting an example to enable us to better pressure North Korea and Iran to give up their nuclear programs. That a man of Obama's intelligence can believe such nonsense is beyond comprehension. There is not a shred of evidence that cuts by the great powers -- the INF treaty, START I, the Treaty of Moscow (2002) -- induced the curtailment of anyone's programs. Moammar Gaddafi gave up his nukes the week we pulled Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole. No treaty involved. The very notion that Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will suddenly abjure nukes because of yet another U.S.-Russian treaty is comical.

A Muscle Car to the Rescue for General Motors
By Bill Vlasic and Nick Bunkley, New York Times

Detroit — Believe it or not, General Motors has a hit car on its hands.

Amid the gloom of bankruptcy and a miserable market for new vehicles, G.M.’s new Chevrolet Camaro muscle car is winning over consumers looking for a little excitement in a bland landscape of look-alike sedans and watered-down sport utilities.

G.M. sold 9,300 Camaros during the month of June — more than either its entire Buick or Cadillac divisions could muster on their own.

Its long hood, rakish grille and brawny fenders echo the powerful look of the Camaro in its heyday, when G.M., Ford and Chrysler turned out tire-squealing cars that defined Detroit.

While it comes with a big V-8 as an option, the base model has a 6-cylinder engine that gets 22 miles per gallon in combined city and highway driving.

It is also priced for the mainstream buyer — about $23,000 for the base version, and up to $32,000 for the loaded V-8 model. [link]

New York Times Magazine Withdraws Altered Photo Essay
PDNPulse

The New York Times has published a new editors' note about the altered photo essay that was published in Sunday's Times Magazine. The newspaper says "most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show." The note does not address which photos were altered, or whether the photographer misrepresented them to the editors. PDN has tried to reach Edgar Martins, the photographer, but has not heard from him. Here's the Times' note:

"A picture essay in The Times Magazine on Sunday and an expanded slide show on NYTimes.com entitled 'Ruins of the Second Gilded Age' showed large housing construction projects across the United States that came to a halt, often half-finished, when the housing market collapsed. The introduction said that the photographer, a freelancer based in Bedford, England, 'creates his images with long exposures but without digital manipulation.'

"A reader, however, discovered on close examination that one of the pictures was digitally altered, apparently for aesthetic reasons. Editors later confronted the photographer and determined that most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show. Had the editors known that the photographs had been digitally manipulated, they would not have published the picture essay, which has been removed from NYTimes.com." [link]

It is time for newspaper editors like those at the Times to get with the times. Rather than get involved in a photo essay or photo contest, knowing that the chances are real good that the pictures they're viewing have been doctored, run a photoshop contest instead. That, at least, truly represents what their readers are viewing as well as the creativity of the submitting "artist."

White House Press Corps Happy to Attend Barack Obama's Off-the-Record BBQ
The Gawker

Reporters from roughly 30 television networks, newspapers, magazines, and web sites celebrated the Fourth of July with Barack Obama at the White House last weekend. Why didn't you know that? Because they were sworn to secrecy.

Gawker has learned that the White House gave tickets to virtually every major news organization that covers the president—the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, CBS News, and so on, about 30 in all. The reporters were invited to attend on the following condition:

"You are being invited to attend this event as a guest. Blogging, Twittering or otherwise reporting on this event is not permitted. If you feel that you cannot agree to abide by these ground rules, please don't claim a ticket."

These are the same people who just a week ago were whining in the press briefing about Obama's malicious and dastardly attempts to "control the press." [link]

Tasmania as cold as ice
Brett Dutschke, Weather Zone

Bitterly cold weather has been gripping Tasmania as temperatures plummet as much as eight below average.

Widespread frost has affected much of the state in the last few mornings and has been severe in central and eastern parts. Liawenee has had minimum temperatures of minus seven degrees in the last two days, six degrees below average.

Some valley locations, such as Bushy Park and Ouse, which dipped to minus four on Wednesday morning, failed to get within seven degrees of the average maximum. [link]

Update expected on Va Freedmen Project
Associated Press

Richmond, Va. (AP) -- Gov. Tim Kaine is set to update Virginia's first-in-the-nation initiative to electronically compile the records of black Virginians whose family history was smudged by slavery and racism.

The Virginia Freedmen Project has collected microfilm from the National Archives and digitized them to make genealogical records more accessible to African-American families.

Kaine will make an announcement Thursday on the initiative at the Black History Museum and Cultural Center in Richmond. The center has worked with volunteers in the labor-intensive task of taking the National Archives materials and making them available electronically. [link]

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
Rasmussen Reports

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 32% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-seven percent (37%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –5.

The number who strongly disapprove inched up another point to the highest level measured to date and the overall Approval Index is at the lowest level yet for Obama. [link]

Soldier Remains Found In Franklin
By Gregory L. Wade, Civil War News

Framklin, Tenn. — Workers uncovered a partial skeleton at a Franklin construction site as a machine operator removed dirt in a trenching operation.

The recovery was made roughly 50 feet from the Columbia Pike about a mile from the town square. This corridor was traveled constantly by soldiers of both armies and was the main artery of the Confederate attack in the Nov. 30, 1864, Battle of Franklin.

Union uniform eagle buttons, a leg bone, jaw bone with teeth and several bone fragments were recovered after Franklin police were called to the site. Detective David Dixon said, “It was evident this was not a crime scene but an archeological finding.” The remains were turned over to the Tennessee Division of Archeology which issued a “stop work” order at the site.

“These are most likely the remains of a Union soldier who might have died during the December 1864 retreat action from Nashville,” said local historian Eric Jacobson. [link]

Detainees, Even if Acquitted, Might Not Go Free
Obama administration said Tuesday it could continue to imprison non-U.S. citizens indefinitely.
The Wall Street Journal

Washington -- The Obama administration said Tuesday it could continue to imprison non-U.S. citizens indefinitely even if they have been acquitted of terrorism charges by a U.S. military commission.

Jeh Johnson, the Defense Department's chief lawyer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that releasing a detainee who has been tried and found not guilty was a policy decision that officials would make based on their estimate of whether the prisoner posed a future threat.

Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration argues that the legal basis for indefinite detention of aliens it considers dangerous is separate from war-crimes prosecutions. [link]

Frost in July hits P.E.I.
CBC News

Temperatures dropped to a record low in Prince Edward Island overnight Tuesday, with reports of frost throughout the province.

An official record low of 3.8 C [39° F] was set early Wednesday morning at Charlottetown airport.

The previous record for that date was 5.1 C [41° F], set in 2005.

Bob Robichaud, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said that to his knowledge, frost has never been reported before in July in P.E.I. [Prince Edward Island].

"That 3.8 we got last night kind of sticks out as being lower than some of the other records for anytime in early July," Robichaud told CBC News on Wednesday. [link]

What were they thinking?

I was shocked by news that The Washington Post got caught attempting to sell access to public officials and high-level reporters by sponsoring dinners at Publisher Katherine Weymouth's home. I was thoroughly unconvinced by Weymouth's mia culpa.

Now Talking Points Memo is reporting that such efforts to sell access are hardly unique. The publisher of The Atlantic has been hosting such events since 2003.

I know revenues are tight, but some money-making schemes should never make it off the drawing board. Media credibility is in a precarious enough state without adding fuel to the fire. [link]

Obama Adviser Says U.S. Should Mull Second Stimulus
By Shamim Adam, Bloomberg

July 7 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. should consider drafting a second stimulus package focusing on infrastructure projects because the $787 billion approved in February was “a bit too small,” said Laura Tyson, an outside adviser to President Barack Obama.

The current plan “will have a positive effect, but the real economy is a sicker patient,” Tyson said in a speech in Singapore today.

“The economy is worse than we forecast on which the stimulus program was based,” Tyson, who is a member of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory board, told the Nomura Equity Forum. “We probably have already 2.5 million more job losses than anticipated.” [link]

Obama's Iceberg
Washington Post

The jobs report last week opened a long gash beneath the waterline of President Obama's legislative agenda. Few realize it, but a scramble for lifeboats is about to begin.

On closer inspection, the economic news, which seemed bad, is even worse. Not only did unemployment rise to 9.5 percent but wages fell, undermining the consumption needed to revive a consumption-driven economy. Unemployment increased among "breadwinners" -- married men and women who head households -- also making major family purchases more difficult. Recent increases in unemployment benefits and food stamps have helped many Americans pay for food and rent. Jobs, however, are what lead to the purchase of furniture, cars and homes. Paired with a decline in business investment, these trends make a second-half recovery less likely.

There are political implications of a weak recovery -- none of them good for the president.

Obama's spending ambitions would have been jaw-dropping even in the best of economic times. Federal spending this year is about 28 percent of gross domestic product -- a figure exceeded only when Franklin Roosevelt was fighting a global war against Germany and Japan. Along the fiscal path Obama has chosen (according to the Congressional Budget Office) our national debt will more than double in 10 years and will amount to 82 percent of the entire economy.

Initially, Obama counted on an atmosphere of economic crisis to grease the passage of any legislation he pronounced an economic need. But it hasn't worked out that way. Whatever their virtues, restricting carbon emissions and expanding the health entitlement do not constitute a direct response to America's financial and economic failures. No economic theory suggests that a round of new federal regulations and entitlements would result in a burst of economic growth. [link]

Valueless ABA Ratings
editorial

The media are treating the American Bar Association's top rating for Judge Sonia Sotomayor like a dispassionate report card. The record shows that the ABA applies a politicized double standard.

The ABA's Canons of Judicial Ethics have a lot of high-minded language. Such as: "To ensure impartiality and fairness to all parties, a judge must be objective and open-minded." And: "A judge shall not . . . by words or conduct manifest bias or prejudice," including but not limited to "bias ... based upon race, sex, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity ... ."

And why not? Because "a judge who manifests bias or prejudice in a proceeding impairs the fairness of the proceeding and brings the judiciary into disrepute. A judge must avoid conduct that may reasonably be perceived as prejudiced or biased."

The very definition of "conduct that may reasonably be perceived as prejudiced or biased" can be found in Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's statements on race.

The unmistakable assertion: A "wise Latina woman" is morally superior to those of another race and the other sex.

The ABA further insists that "a judge shall not hold membership in any organization that practices invidious discrimination on the basis of race, sex, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity or sexual orientation."

But Sotomayor violated that too, until recently holding membership in an all-female "old girls" club whose only purpose is networking to empower its already elitist members.

Yet in spite of that, the senators have forgotten those sentiments, and the ABA is ignoring its own precepts — all because a dependable liberal is on the verge of getting a lifetime Supreme Court seat.

In the past, outstanding jurists ranging from Robert Bork to Clarence Thomas were scored well below Sotomayor. That was especially outrageous in Bork's case since he never had a decision overturned by the high court; Sotomayor has had 60% of her rulings thrown out.

Politics, not competence, is the ABA's motivation. [link] [my emphasis]

After Five Years, Gmail Finally Sheds the ‘Beta’
By Miguel Helft, New York Times

San Francisco — What took Google so long?

Like many software products, Google’s Gmail service was first released with a “beta” label on it — meaning that while it was polished enough for public use, it was still in a testing phase, so any glitches were to be excused. Beta versions, which are sandwiched between internal “alpha” versions and final “release” versions, typically have a lifespan of weeks or months.

But Gmail was different. Released on April 1, 2004, it was still in beta five years and tens of millions of users later.

That changed on Tuesday, when Gmail finally shed the beta label, signaling that Google considered the product to be fully baked. [link]

In Russia, Obama’s Star Power Does Not Translate
By Clifford J. Levy and Ellen Barry, New York Times

Moscow — Let other capitals go all weak-kneed when President Obama visits. Moscow has greeted Mr. Obama, who on Tuesday night concluded a two-day Russian-American summit meeting, as if he were just another dignitary passing through.

Crowds did not clamor for a glimpse of him. Headlines offered only glancing or flippant notice of his activities. Television programming was uninterrupted; devotees of the Russian Judge Judy had nothing to fear. Even many students and alumni of the Western-oriented business school where Mr. Obama gave the graduation address on Tuesday seemed merely respectful, but hardly enthralled.

“We don’t really understand why Obama is such a star,” said Kirill Zagorodnov, 25, one of the graduates. “It’s a question of trust, how he behaves, how he positions himself, that typical charisma, which in Russia is often parodied. Russians really are not accustomed to it. It is like he is trying to manipulate the public.” [link]

Joining the (tea) party here at home
editorial

The 400 or so people at Saturday’s Danville TEA Party got the basics right. But the group... has a long way to go to convince most Americans.

The best arguments made — that federal government spending must be brought in line with revenues and that existing programs have to work as well as possible before the public can be confident of adding new ones — sometimes got lost in the white-hot rhetoric.

One elderly veteran said he worried that a new federal health care system would endanger his care — especially the expensive prescription drugs he received. He seemed worried that under a new federal health care system, his needs would be in competition with someone who was younger and potentially had more years to pay into the system.

But he inadvertently spoke two ugly truths about the government: For all its faults, it continues to care for people like him — and he wants the government to keep doing that.

Most of the people at Saturday’s TEA Party were senior citizens. Were they worried that the government’s fiscal recklessness would endanger their Social Security checks? [link]

Specter faces hurdles in Democratic re-election
Ex-GOPer 'miscalculated' switch
By Donald Lambro, Washington Times

When Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania suddenly became a Democrat in April, it seemed he had virtually ensured his re-election to a sixth term in 2010.

The veteran senator had the backing of President Obama, top state Democratic leaders such as Gov. Edward G. Rendell and Sen. Bob Casey and was all but assured of the Democratic nomination in a state that has been trending heavily Democratic in recent elections.

However, a new set of obstacles stands in the way of the senator, who switched parties in the face of polls showing he could not win the Republican Party's renomination.

A Franklin & Marshall College Poll (formerly the Keystone Poll) of Pennsylvania voters reported last week that 28 percent said he deserves re-election, down from 40 percent in March. While it showed he was holding on to 43 percent of Democratic voters, just 24 percent of independents and 11 percent of Republicans questioned by the pollsters supported keeping him in office. [link]

"The truth is, there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited," Vice President Joe Biden told ABC News. Really?

Those who pushed through this year's $787 billion fiscal "stimulus" seem to be counting on the American people's short memory. Wasn't it just last year that we were told, repeatedly and with stark emphasis, that this economy was the "worst" since the Great Depression?

That was the pretense for not only the stimulus, but for the federal takeover of the U.S. auto industry and the quasi-takeover of the U.S. financial industry. It's also the underlying premise for both nationalized health care and massive new taxes to cut CO2 emissions.

If the stimulus passed, the White House vowed, unemployment would peak at 8%. Today, it's 9.5% — and rising.

"The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy," said Biden. But the "truth is" something quite different.

Many voices — including ours — were raised in opposition to the stimulus when it was debated.

Americans were promised "shovel ready" projects would put stimulus money to work right away creating jobs. For the record, since February, the month the stimulus was passed, the U.S. has lost 2 million jobs. The stimulus is clearly a failure. [link]

Steve McNair apparently died not at the hands of his mistress in a murder-suicide but at the hands of the “gun culture” of America. So decides sports writer Mike Lupica in the New York Daily News, who must have leapt to his typewriter within minutes of the wire services announcing McNair’s death in order to indict millions of Americans who don’t kill people but manage to own firearms responsibly.

[snip lengthy quote from the Lupica piece]

For the record, the murder of a boyfriend, as this appears to be, is slightly more likely to happen by knife instead of gun. Statistics from the DoJ on murders of intimates from 1990-2005 show that 47% of murdered boyfriends get stabbed to death, while 45% of them get killed by guns. Would Lupica attribute that to a “knife culture”?

But why let facts get in the way of accusing every gun owner in America of McNair’s murder? [link]

PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW YORK NY
455 PM EDT WED JUL 1 2009

...UNUSUALLY WET AND COOL JUNE FOR CENTRAL PARK...

THIS JUNE IS TIED FOR THE 8TH COOLEST ON RECORD. THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE WAS 67.5...3.7 DEGREES BELOW NORMAL...WHICH ALSO OCCURRED IN 1897.

THIS WAS THE COOLEST JUNE SINCE 1958...WHEN THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE WAS 67.2 DEGREES.

CENTRAL PARK HAS NOT HIT 85 DEGREES IN THE MONTH OF JUNE THIS YEAR.

THE LAST TIME THIS OCCURRED WAS BACK IN 1916. THIS HAS ONLY OCCURRED 2 OTHER TIMES...1903 AND 1886. [link]

To ease tomorrow's bills, lawmakers need to do more to encourage emergent green energy producers. Generating power with fossil fuels is only going to become more expensive as irreplaceable fuels become scarcer and more expensive, and as additional environmental measures are required.

The lawmakers' job is to encourage innovative changes to produce cleaner energy at affordable prices rather than to rail against a system they created.

Three points:

1) The admission that change is needed to bring about affordable clean energy prices speaks volumes.

2) "Clean" energy is much more expensive than coal (that evil fossil fuel that generates most of our electricity). The two most often mentioned alternatives are wind and solar. According to the New York Times, wind (which is a very unreliable source of energy) is 50% more expensive than coal. And solar power - also an extremely unreliable source of energy when the Sun isn't shining - "will be 173% more expensive per unit of energy delivered than traditional coal power," according to a report issued by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's Kit Bond.

3) So how is the pursuit of expensive alternatives to the truly inexpensive and reliable and abundant source of energy - coal - supposed to "ease tomorrow's electric bills"?

It won't. It can't. It's bullshit.

Someone needs to pound that message into the blockheads' blockheads.

The Incredible Shrinking Sheep of Scotland
By Bryan Walsh, Time

News alert: the sheep of Scotland are shrinking! On Soay Island, off the western coast of Scotland, wild sheep are apparently defying the theory of evolution and progressively getting smaller.

Why? In short, because of climate change. Generally, the sheep's life cycle goes like this: they fatten up on grass during the fertile, sunny summer; then the harsh winter comes, the grass disappears and the smallest, scrawniest sheep die off, while their bigger cousins survive. That's how you end up with big sheep, which — according to Darwin's laws of natural selection — will pass on their big genes to the next generation.

But over the past 25 years, the average Soay Island wild sheep has decreased in size, according to a report in the July 2 issue of Science by a team of researchers led by Tim Coulson of Imperial College London. Thanks largely to global warming, the winters on Soay Island are becoming shorter and milder. That makes food more abundant and allows some of the smaller, more vulnerable and younger sheep to survive. Then they go on to have offspring that tend to be small themselves — and have a better chance of survival because of the increasingly mild winters. [link]

You won't want to warm up to this
By Robert E. Murray, writing in the Washington Times

Perhaps the most destructive legislation in our country's history passed Friday in the House of Representatives -- the Waxman-Markey tax bill offered in the guise of addressing climate change.

This bill, named for Democrats Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, would have adverse and lingering consequences for every American. It would raise the cost of electricity for our homes, fuel for our cars and the energy that produces our manufacturing jobs, with little or no environmental benefit. Further, independent experts estimate it would cost Americans more than $2 trillion in a little more than eight years.

All Americans in the Midwest, South and Rocky Mountain regions would be most drastically affected because the climate-change legislation would destroy the nation's coal industry and the low-cost electricity it has provided to those regions for generations. Wealth would be transferred away from almost every state to the West Coast and New England.

The most abundant and by far least expensive energy source in our country for generating electricity is coal. America's coal reserves rival the energy potential of Saudi Arabian oil. Unfortunately, the Waxman-Markey bill would force America to throw away this tremendous resource, and our low-cost electricity with it.

The legislation sets an unattainable cap on carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, with the first reductions due by 2012. Under the program, businesses that emit carbon dioxide would be required to purchase or obtain from the government special carbon dioxide credits. This carbon dioxide cap would force utilities to switch from lower-cost coal to natural gas or other, more expensive energy sources. Reliable estimates show this bill would cost each American family at least $3,000 more for energy each year.

The chief executive of one of the nation's major utilities recently said it best in the Wall Street Journal: "The 25 states that depend on coal for more than 50 percent of their electricity ... will have to shut down and replace the majority of their fossil fuel plants as a result of the climate change legislation." [link] [my emphasis]

Would this bill stop climate change?

No.

Palin And Her Enemies

Male commentators will attack you for parading your children. Female commentators will attack you for not staying home with them. You’ll be sneered at for how you talk and how many colleges you attended. You’ll endure gibes about your “slutty” looks and your “white trash concupiscence,” while a prominent female academic declares that your “greatest hypocrisy” is the “pretense” that you’re a woman. And eight months after the election, the professionals who pressed you into the service of a gimmicky, dreary, idea-free campaign will still be blaming you for their defeat.

All of this had something to do with ordinary partisan politics. But it had everything to do with Palin’s gender and her social class.

Sarah Palin is beloved by millions because her rise suggested, however temporarily, that the old American aphorism about how anyone can grow up to be president might actually be true.

But her unhappy sojourn on the national stage has had a different moral: Don’t even think about it. [link]