Rail could be answer to I-81 gridlock, report says
By Jeff Sturgeon, The Roanoke Times

Virginia could eliminate about one in three trucks from Interstate 81 with extensive --and expensive -- rail improvements, a consultant says.

Given the high cost and logistical barriers to such a plan, however, the consultant endorses a more modest approach that will shift fewer trucks -- perhaps one in seven -- much to the disappointment of some railroad supporters.

Three years in the making at a cost of $75,000, the December report from consultant Cambridge Systematics recommends Virginia stick to its present plan to address truck congestion on I-81: funding the Crescent Corridor.

The Crescent Corridor is a proposed new intermodal rail service under which Norfolk Southern Corp. intends to expand its rail system to better compete with, and integrate with, highway trucking.

The corridor is designed to link the southern freight hubs of New Orleans and Memphis, Tenn., with those in New Jersey. [link]

Cheney's Revenge
The Obama Administration is vindicating Bush antiterror policy.
Wall Street Journal editorial

Dick Cheney is not the most popular of politicians, but when he offered a harsh assessment of the Obama Administration's approach to terrorism last May, his criticism stung—so much that the President gave a speech the same day that was widely seen as a direct response. Though neither man would admit it, eight months later political and security realities are forcing Mr. Obama's antiterror policies ever-closer to the former Vice President's.

In fact, the President's changes in antiterror policy have never been as dramatic as he or his critics have advertised. His supporters on the left have repeatedly howled when the Justice Department quietly went to court and offered the same legal arguments the Bush Administration made, among them that the President has the power to detain enemy combatants indefinitely without charge. He has also ramped up drone strikes against al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in Pakistan.

However, the Administration has tried to break from its predecessors on several big antiterror issues, and it is on those that it is suffering the humiliation of having to walk back from its own righteous declarations. This is Dick Cheney's revenge.

Begin with Mr. Obama's executive order, two days after his inauguration, to shut the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within one year. [link]

Matthews Attacks Palin for 12 Minutes: 'Can a Palm Reader be President?' 'Is She a Balloon Head?'
By Noel Sheppard, NewsBusters

Chris Matthews Monday went on a twelve minute attack on former Alaska governor Sarah Palin that should make his fellow MSNBCers and the liberal blogosphere quite happy.

Here's how Monday's "Hardball" began:

"Can a palm reader be president? What do we think of kids in school who write stuff on their hands to get through a test? What do we think of a would-be political leader who does it to look like she`s speaking without notes? What do we think of Sarah Palin this weekend answering pre-screened questions from a like-minded audience in Nashville, a tea party convention, and still having to put a cheat sheet on her palm to answer what she calls the basics of her beliefs? How can someone presume to be auditioning for president when they can`t even answer questions they know are coming?"

And that was just the teaser! Readers are strongly cautioned to prepare themselves for a level of vitriol and invective normally only spewed on television by Matthews' colleague Keith Olbermann. [link]

Irked, Wall St. Hedges Its Bet on Democrats
By David D. Kirkpatrick, New York Times

Washington — If the Democratic Party has a stronghold on Wall Street, it is JPMorgan Chase.

Its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is a friend of President Obama’s from Chicago, a frequent White House guest and a big Democratic donor. Its vice chairman, William M. Daley, a former Clinton administration cabinet official and Obama transition adviser, comes from Chicago’s Democratic dynasty.

But this year Chase’s political action committee is sending the Democrats a pointed message. While it has contributed to some individual Democrats and state organizations, it has rebuffed solicitations from the national Democratic House and Senate campaign committees. Instead, it gave $30,000 to their Republican counterparts.

The shift reflects the hard political edge to the industry’s campaign to thwart Mr. Obama’s proposals for tighter financial regulations. [link]

Specter wins party nod, but not hearts
By David Catanese, Politico

Lancaster, Pa. — Even as he accepted the resounding backing of the Pennsylvania Democratic state committee here Saturday, party-switching Sen. Arlen Specter’s vulnerability was on vivid display as he botched the name of a key Democratic officeholder in his acceptance speech.

On Friday evening — as Gov. Ed Rendell stood on stage alongside Specter, Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and a beaming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — to celebrate the governor’s accomplishments and laud Specter’s role in helping pass the $787 billion economic stimulus package last winter ... [link]

New errors in IPCC climate change report
By Richard Gray and Ben Leach, London Telegraph

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report is supposed to be the world’s most authoritative scientific account of the scale of global warming.

But this paper has discovered a series of new flaws in it including:

* The publication of inaccurate data on the potential of wave power to produce electricity around the world, which was wrongly attributed to the website of a commercial wave-energy company.

* Claims based on information in press releases and newsletters.

* New examples of statements based on student dissertations, two of which were unpublished.

* More claims which were based on reports produced by environmental pressure groups.

* They are the latest in a series of damaging revelations about the IPCC’s most recent report, published in 2007. [link]

House of Peers
By Mark Steyn, National Review

As Jonah [Goldberg] and I have written here previously, "climate change" is not only a scientific scandal but also a massive journalistic failure. While the "Canadian Journalism Project" continues to insist that dissenting from the orthodoxy is "irresponsible journalism", Matt Ridley at The Spectator acknowledges the reality:

"Journalists are wont to moan that the slow death of newspapers will mean a disastrous loss of investigative reporting. The web is all very well, they say, but who will pay for the tenacious sniffing newshounds to flush out the real story? ‘Climategate’ proves the opposite to be true. It was amateur bloggers who scented the exaggerations, distortions and corruptions in the climate establishment; whereas newspaper reporters, even after the scandal broke, played poodle to their sources."

Mr Ridley credits various British, Canadian and American bloggers, and then makes this observation:

"Notice that all of these sceptic bloggers are self-employed businessmen. Their strengths are networks and feedback: mistakes get quickly corrected; new leads are opened up; expertise is shared; links are made."

The correcting mechanisms of competitive businesses are largely alien to America's unreadable monodailies, which is why they'll be extinct long before the polar bear. [link]

The overt oppression of the majority manifested most plainly a few years ago when voters wrote discrimination into the commonwealth's constitution. They forbade the state from granting or recognizing same-sex marriages.

More pernicious is the easy bigotry of inaction. Because most people are unaffected by laws that discriminate against gays and lesbians, they perceive no pressing need to fix them. They allow Virginia's leaders to eschew change in favor of comfortable discrimination wrapped in notions of tradition and faith.

Bayh a tough sell in Indiana
By Donald Lambro, Washington Times

If you want more evidence of how deep Democratic losses may be in the fall midterm elections, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh's suddenly shaky bid for a third term is Exhibit A.

A few months ago, Mr. Bayh was considered a shoo-in for re-election in the Hoosier state. Now election handicappers have moved him from "safe" to endangered.

Despite Mr. Bayh's once carefully cultivated image as a party moderate, he has lurched left under the rhetorical spell of the Obama presidency and the pressures of the Senate's liberal Democratic caucus.

He voted for the $2.5 trillion Obamacare bill despite strong opposition back home, where polls showed 60 percent opposition. He backed President Obama's $800-billion-plus stimulus bill, which has failed to create the 3.5 million jobs Mr. Obama promised. He supported Mr. Obama's unpopular move to remove terrorist prisoners from Guantanamo Bay and try them in civilian courts.

This was not the sensible, moderate Evan Bayh who once chaired the centrist-leaning Democratic Leadership Council that declared war on the liberal wing of his party. He broke with his state's right-of-center political traditions, and Indiana voters are breaking away from him. [link]

Democrats chafe as White House wavers on health care bill
By Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico

President Barack Obama has left Democrats as confused as ever about how the White House plans to deliver a health care reform bill this year, after two weeks of inconsistent statements, negligible hands-on involvement and a sudden shift to a jobs-first message.

Democrats on Capitol Hill and beyond say they have no clear understanding of the White House strategy — or even whether there is one — and are growing impatient with Obama’s reluctance to guide them toward a legislative solution.

And some Democrats feel that every time they look to White House for clarity, they hear something different, as though the strategy is whatever the president or his top advisers said that day.

In the past two weeks, since Democrats lost the Massachusetts Senate race, Obama or his top advisers have suggested all of the following: breaking the bill into smaller parts, keeping it together in one comprehensive package, putting it at the back of legislative line and needing to “punch it through” Congress, as Obama himself said Tuesday.

“I’m not sure where the White House is right now,” said Ralph G. Neas, a longtime progressive activist who is now the head of the National Coalition on Health Care. “But I do believe that given everything that has happened, the time has come for more forceful presidential leadership. That is the only way to close the deal. That kind of leadership involves providing more precise guidance to Congress and a clear case to the American people on how this benefits families. The president must step up and wield the power of his office.” [link]

Where has this Obama been?

Since the State of the Union address, the president has been bounding about, displaying a new sense of vigor and confidence and a fighter’s spirit. He almost looks like the president people thought that he would be — a paladin, not a pacifist.

Lost in Translation

He’s still stuck on studious.

He seems to believe that if he does a better job of explaining his aggressive agenda, then he’ll win hearts and minds. It’s an honorable ambition, but it’s foolhardy. People want clear goals, clearly defined and clearly (and concisely) conveyed. They’re suspicious of complexity.

Republicans know this well. Obama knows it not.

The audacity of nope

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., has been holding up a bunch of President Obama's nominees - according to some reports going so far as to take the unprecedented step of putting a hold on every single one. Why such a stunning level of obstructionism, even from the Republican Party, which has taken obstructionism to unheard of heights?

Shelby is upset because Obama blocked spending for a couple of multimillion earmarks he got passed.

That's right: A Republican senator is holding up Obama's nominees as part of a hissy fit over canceled pork barrel projects for Alabama. What incredible pettiness.

The audacity of nope reaches new heights. [link]

The fiscal woes of Europe's so-called peripheral economies—Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Italy—have sparked intense worry in recent days about a possible debt default or need for a bailout by stronger European nations.

Markets got a brief break from the selling after the U.S. Labor Department reported that the U.S. unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 9.7%, but investors were ultimately confused by the figures, which also showed that the world's largest economy continued shedding jobs in January.[my emphasis] [link requires subscription]

What to do on an airplane when you find yourself seated next to a real jerk

1. Take out your laptop.
2. Slowly open your laptop.
3. Turn it on.
4. Make certain your neighbor is watching.
5. Open your internet browser.
6. Close your eyes for a few moments, open them and then look up to the sky, or the heavens if you will.
7. Breathe deeply and open this site.

8. Look at the expression on your neighbor's face.

Conyers wants Haiti relief official demoted over diversity deficit
By Molly K. Hooper, The Hill

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) has called on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to demote the official coordinating Haiti relief efforts for not having enough minority staffers.

The House Judiciary Committee Chairman sent a letter to Clinton on Thursday after Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, showed up at a meeting with the 42-member Congressional Black Caucus without any African American staffers in tow.

“I was alarmed and chagrined to learn that none of the approximately dozen staff he brought with him were African American,” Conyers wrote in the letter. “This is so serious an error in judgment that it warrants his immediate demotion to a subordinate position at AID.” [link]

Permits approved for $6B power plant in rural Va 
Associated Press

Surry, Va. (AP) -- The Surry County Board of Supervisors has approved permits that could bring the state's largest coal-fueled power plant there.

The board Thursday unanimously approved permits for about 350 acres outside Dendron, where Old Dominion Electric Cooperative plans to build the $6 billion, 1,500-megawatt Cypress Creek Power Station. While most of the project will be in Dendron, a fly-ash landfill and water-intake facility would be built in the county.

Cooperative spokesman Jeb Hockman says the vote allows federal and state environmental agencies to start testing the site.

Opponents say the plant's emissions would harm the environment and people's health. Supporters say the area needs new jobs and tax revenue. [link]

Records: Palin cabins not noted in tax assessments
By Rachel D'Oro, Associated Press Writer

Anchorage, Alaska – Records show that Sarah Palin hasn't paid any property taxes on cabins that have been built on two backcountry plots partially owned by the former Alaska governor.

There are no tax assessments for the two-story, house-sized cabins, a workshop and a sauna spotted Thursday in an aerial survey. Property taxes totaling $156.13 were paid on the land in 2009 — but that bill did not include anything for the structures because the local assessor didn't know about the new construction nearly 100 miles north of Anchorage.

The issue has attracted the attention of local tax officials who conducted the scheduled aerial survey of properties in the area on Thursday. The area is accessible only by floatplane, snowmobile or four-wheeler.

Dave Dunivan, the assessor for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, said such a survey had not been done there in five years, before construction started on the cabins. [link]

A year later, after stunning Democratic setbacks in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, Obama gave a stay-the-course State of the Union address (a) pledging not to walk away from health-care reform, (b) seeking to turn college education increasingly into a federal entitlement, and (c) asking again for cap-and-trade energy legislation. Plus, of course, another stimulus package, this time renamed a "jobs bill."

This being a democracy, don't the Democrats see that clinging to this agenda will march them over a cliff? Don't they understand Massachusetts?

Well, they understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly. 

May Cooler Heads Prevail
By A. Kam Napier, Honolulu Magazine

I feel I’ve been had.

I grew up admiring science and scientists. One of my favorite TV shows as a kid? Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. I took global warming seriously because I took scientists seriously and forgot that they are people, too, no less prone to vanity, piety or hubris than others. When I read about the CRU e-mails, a scandal now known as Climategate, I felt anger and disappointment, some of it directed at myself.

People make these kinds of mistakes all the time, and the motives are no mystery. For the researchers, grant dollars and reputations are on the line. For reporters, global warming offers the thrill of covering The Biggest Story Ever Told, an appeal I could not resist. For politicians, it has offered an endless opportunity for grandstanding and power grabs. Convinced they are saving the earth—what could be more rewarding or important?—all three groups helped each other lose their minds.

It’s time for scientists to do what science is all about: check their work to see if the results can be reproduced. Fresh eyes need to look at the original data the CRU used, to see if they can independently find the same evidence for warming. But wait—that can’t be done. Somehow, the CRU managed to “lose” all its original data.

How’s that for an inconvenient truth? [link]

Democrats coy about jobs bill costs
By Meredith Shiner, Politico

Senate Democrats are moving quickly on a jobs bill, with plans for the first procedural votes as early as Monday.

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday would not reveal any details about what’s in his bill, how much it would cost or how it would be paid for.

Reid would only say that he’s hoping to get some Republicans on board to make it bipartisan —especially now that Republicans have a 41st senator in Scott Brown, who will be sworn in today. And he predicted that the Senate could pass the bill — whatever is in it — by the end of next week. [link]

Medical journal recants 1998 study linking autism to vaccine
The Globe & Mail

A major British medical journal on Tuesday retracted a flawed study linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism and bowel disease.

The retraction by The Lancet comes a day after a competing medical journal, BMJ, issued an embargoed commentary calling for The Lancet to formally retract the study. The commentary was to have been published on Wednesday.

The BMJ commentary said once the study by British surgeon and medical researcher Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues appeared in 1998 in The Lancet, “the arguments were considered by many to be proven and the ghastly social drama of the demon vaccine took on a life of its own.”

Since the controversial paper was published, British parents abandoned the vaccine in droves, leading to a resurgence of measles. Subsequent studies have found no proof that the vaccine is connected to autism, though some parents are still wary of the shot.

In Britain, vaccination rates for measles have never recovered and there are outbreaks of the disease every year. [link]

A $2 trillion tax hike
New York Post editorial

Look out, America: President Obama is coming for your money. And this time, almost no one is safe.

The budget he proposed Monday sucks a mind-blowing $2 trillion in new taxes from hard-working Americans -- of practically all stripes -- over the next decade.

You'd think that the president might have taken pause after Bay State voters last month handed Ted Kennedy's Senate seat to an avowed tax-cutter, Scott Brown.

Wrong.

Clearly, Obama isn't letting a little thing like that stop him.

Under his plan, Uncle Sam's cut of US output would rise by nearly half a trillion dollars in the next two years alone. That's a 13.5 percent jump (from 14.8 percent to 16.8 percent).

Who gets socked?

Almost everyone, one way or another. [link]

Obama plots new energy path
By Lisa Lerer, Politico

Hoping to increase support in the Senate for his stalled energy bill, President Barack Obama on Wednesday outlined a new strategy to boost biofuels production and reduce greenhouse gas emissions with “clean coal” technology.

Obama announced a carbon capture-and-storage task force to figure out how to deploy “clean coal” technology on a wide scale in the next 10 years. He called for five to 10 commercial demonstration projects to be up and running by 2016. [link]

IPCC: International Pack of Climate Crooks
By Marc Sheppard, American Thinker

Unquestionably the world’s final authority on the subject, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's findings and recommendations have formed the bedrock of literally every climate-related initiative worldwide for more than a decade. Likewise, virtually all such future endeavors -- be they Kyoto II, domestic cap-and-tax, or EPA carbon regulation, would inexorably be built upon the credibility of the same U.N. panel's "expert" counsel. But a glut of ongoing recent discoveries of systemic fraud has rocked that foundation, and the entire man-made global warming house of cards is now teetering on the verge of complete collapse. 

Simply stated, we've been swindled. We've been set up as marks by a gang of opportunistic hucksters who have exploited the naïvely altruistic intentions of the environmental movement in an effort to control international energy consumption while redistributing global wealth and (in many cases) greedily lining their own pockets in the process.

Here in the states, left-leaning policymakers and their cohorts in the MSM have thus far all but ignored both the reality and implications of the fraud unveiled by Climategate, Glaciergate, Amazongate, and the myriad other AGW-hyping scandals that seem to surface almost daily. Remarkably, most continue to discuss "climate pollution" and "carbon footprints," and the  tragedy of Copenhagen’s failure, even as the global warming fever of their own contagion plunges precipitously. The president appears equally deluded, as passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill (as though the climate might somehow be managed by parliamentary edict) was one of the many goals he set forth in his State of the Union address last week.

But their denial will be short-lived as even the last vestiges of the green lie they so desperately cling to evaporate under the heat of the spotlight suddenly shining upon them. [link]

Future of Tazewell wind farm looks bleak
By Debra McCown, reporter, Bristol Herald Courier

Tazewell, Va. – A proposed wind farm project might be dead in Tazewell County.

The future looks bleak for the project after the Tazewell County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 Tuesday to prohibit development of tall structures on the county’s scenic ridgelines.

“I think this proposed tall structure construction carries with it too much public controversy and too little public revenue,” said Supervisor Mike Hymes, who cast the deciding vote on a divided board.

The project is one of two announced in far Southwest Virginia a year ago by Dominion and BP Wind Energy. The other, planned for the ridges of Black Mountain in Wise County, has received enthusiastic support from that county’s board. 

“We are proud of the supervisors,” said Charlie Stacy, a member of the Mountain Preservation Association, which formed to opposed the project. “They saved one of God’s greatest creations tonight from devastation.” [link]

No Help in Sight, More Homeowners Walk Away
By David Streitfeld, New York Times

The number of Americans who owed more than their homes were worth was virtually nil when the real estate collapse began in mid-2006, but by the third quarter of 2009, an estimated 4.5 million homeowners had reached the critical threshold, with their home’s value dropping below 75 percent of the mortgage balance.

They are stretched, aggrieved and restless. With figures released last week showing that the real estate market was stalling again, their numbers are now projected to climb to a peak of 5.1 million by June — about 10 percent of all Americans with mortgages.

“We’re now at the point of maximum vulnerability,” said Sam Khater, a senior economist with First American CoreLogic, the firm that conducted the recent research. “People’s emotional attachment to their property is melting into the air.” [link]

Emanuel apologized for 'retarded' remark
By Ben Smith, Politico

A White House official emails that Rahm Emanuel has acknowledged calling liberal Democrats "retarded" and apologized for the remark.

"Rahm called Tim Shriver Wednesday to apologize and the apology was accepted," the official said.

Shriver is the Chairman and CEO of the Special Olympics, which has launched a campaign against what it calls "the R word."

The remark was first reported last week in the Wall Street Journal, and drew an extended attack from Sarah Palin.

Said the official, “The White House remains committed to addressing the concerns and needs of Americans living with disabilities and recognizes that derogatory remarks demean us all.” [link]

Early draft of the Constitution found in Phila.
By Edward Colimore, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

Researcher Lorianne Updike Toler was intrigued by the centuries-old document at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

On the back of a treasured draft of the U.S. Constitution was a truncated version of the same document, starting with the familiar words: "We The People. . . ."

They had been scribbled upside down by one of the Constitution's framers, James Wilson, in the summer of 1787. The cursive continued, then abruptly stopped, as if pages were missing.

A mystery, Toler thought, until she examined other Wilson papers from the Historical Society's vault in Philadelphia and found what appeared to be the rest of the draft, titled "The Continuation of the Scheme." [link]

Still Rolling: Fox News Has Its Best January Ever
by Steve Krakauer, Mediaite

Fox News had its best January in the history of the network, and was the only cable news network to grow year-to-year.

FNC also had the top 13 programs on cable news in total viewers for the fifth month in a row, and the top 13 programs in the A25-54 demographic for the first time in more than five years.

• FNC grew in double digits in both total viewers and the A25-54 demographic from January 2009. In prime time, it was up 22% in total viewers and 51% in the demo. CNN was down 34% and 37% and MSNBC down 26% and 38%. [link]

Foundation rallies against coal-fired plant in Va.
Associated Press

Dendron, Va. (AP) -- The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is urging officials to reject zoning changes necessary for Old Dominion Electric Cooperative to build what could become Virginia's largest coal-fired power plant.

The Dendron City Council hosted a public hearing Monday night on Old Dominion's proposal to build a 1,500-megawatt Cypress Creek Power Station at an estimated cost of up to $6 billion.

Foundation Advocate Chris Moore argues the cooperative's request lacks details about the proposed plant's impact on the community, environment and public health.

Rezoning hearings are set Thursday before the Surry and Sussex counties' boards of supervisors. [link]

Environmental group: Uranium mines a threat
By Laurence Hammack, Roanoke Times

A proposal to mine uranium could contaminate drinking water from the Roanoke River, an environmental group warned Monday as it placed the river basin on a top 10 list of endangered areas in the South.

The Southern Environmental Law Center is concerned about a push to mine uranium in Pittsylvania County, and the possibility of similar projects in the Piedmont region of Virginia. [link]

The Hottest Hoax in the World
BY Ninad D. Sheth, Open, the magazine

It was presented as fact. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, led by India’s very own RK Pachauri, even announced a consensus on it. The world was heating up and humans were to blame. A pack of lies, it turns out.

The climate change fraud that is now unravelling is unprecedented in its deceit, unmatched in scope—and for the liberal elite, akin to 9 on the Richter scale. Never have so few fooled so many for so long, ever.

The entire world was being asked to change the way it lives on the basis of pure hyperbole. Propriety, probity and transparency were routinely sacrificed.

The truth is: the world is not heating up in any significant way. Neither are the Himalayan glaciers going to melt as claimed by 2035. Nor is there any link at all between natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and global warming. All that was pure nonsense, or if you like, ‘no-science’!

The climate change mafia, led by Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), almost pulled off the heist of the century through fraudulent data and suppression of procedure. All the while, they were cornering millions of dollars in research grants that heaped one convenient untruth upon another. And as if the money wasn’t enough, the Nobel Committee decided they should have the coveted Peace Prize.

The world awaits answers, based not on writings of sundry freelance journalists and non-experts, but on actual verifiable data on whether the globe is warming at all, and if so by how much. Only then can policy options be calibrated. As things stand, there is little doubt that the IPCC will need to be reconstituted with a limited mandate. This mess needs investigation and questions need to be answered as to why absurd claims were taken as gospel truth. The future of everything we know as ‘normal’ depends on this. The real danger is that the general public is now weary of the whole thing, a little tired of the debate, and may not really care for the truth, convenient or otherwise. [link]

 

Danny Williams going to U.S. for heart surgery
CBC News

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is set to undergo heart surgery this week in the United States.

CBC News confirmed Monday that Williams, 59, left the province earlier in the day and will have surgery later in the week.

The premier's office provided few details, beyond confirming that he would have heart surgery and saying that it was not necessarily a routine procedure. [link]

Obama budget: Record spending, record deficit
By Andrew Taylor, Associated Press Write

Washington (AP) — Spelling out painful priorities, President Barack Obama urged Congress on Monday to quickly approve a huge new shot of spending for recession relief and job creation, part of a record $3.8 trillion budget that would boost the deficit beyond any in the nation's history while only slowly beginning to put Americans back to work.

The budget paints a remarkably dire picture of a federal government that will have to borrow one-third of what it spends next year as it runs a deficit that still would total some $1.3 trillion. [link]

And considering those who cannot work....female, 86 years old, worked hard all her life, lives on 700 dollars a month. Has one prescription per month her needs, house is small, modest but the electric bill was 378 for Jan. Now figure it out...add it up...with the cost of the grocery bill, taxes. insurance and any needed things ... how can anyone make it on that? She has no car but everything else is so expensive she can't afford one anyway...why are we allowing our government to treat our elderly citizens with such disrespect? Not to mention the ones who are working, paying their bills and they receive a 700 dollar electric bill....where are our lawmakers who are 'working' for us????

UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim
By Jonathan Leake, Times of London

A startling report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its 2007 benchmark report that even a slight change in rainfall could see swathes of the rainforest rapidly replaced by savanna grassland.

The source for its claim was a report from WWF, an environmental pressure group, which was authored by two green activists. They had based their “research” on a study published in Nature, the science journal, which did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning. This weekend WWF said it was launching an internal inquiry into the study. [link] 

New Study Suggests U.S. Ambassador Rice Isn't Engaging the UN
By Richard Grenell, writing in the Huffington Post

[Permanent Representative to the UN Susan] Rice has been spending several days a week in Washington with her larger than normal DC-based staff and spending less time with the 200-plus employees who work for her in New York. While Rice launched her tenure with a glamour spread in Vogue Magazine by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz showing her kicking back in an empty Security Council Chamber, she seems to not enjoy the Chamber when it's full of diplomats. During the recent Haiti crisis, Rice was not only absent from the Security Council vote to expand the UN's peacekeeping operation but she also failed to call an emergency meeting in the immediate aftermath to request more help. In fact, 7 days after the Haiti earthquake left tens of thousands of people in the streets without food or shelter, it was UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon that came to the Security Council to request more troops - the American Ambassador hadn't bothered. [link]

Minnesota wind turbines won’t work in cold weather
By Ed Morrissey

Minnesota invested itself in alternative energy sources years ago, and so the revelation that the state spent $3.3 million on eleven wind turbines hardly qualifies as news. However, the fact that they don’t work in cold weather does. KSTP reports that none of the wind turbines work, prompting the Twin Cities ABC affiliate to dub them “no-spin zones.” [link]

Mental Health Parity for Insurance
By Megan McArdle, The Atlantic

Apparently, the administration has issued rules requiring parity for mental health treatment with other illnesses. They'll take effect July 1st. If you want to know why health insurance costs keep marching upward seemingly uncontrolled, this is why: mandating new benefits is always popular, and the government doesn't have to pay for them. [link]

GOP to tie Obama to Dem candidates
By Jonathan Martin, Politico

Honolulu – As buoyant Republicans devise their game plan for the 2010 campaign, party officials are counting on a boost from an unlikely source – President Obama.

A tactic that would have seemed far-fetched a year ago, when the new president was sworn in with a 67 percent job approval rating, is now emerging as a key component of the GOP strategy: Tie Democratic opponents to Obama and make them answer for some of the unpopular policies associated with the chief executive.

GOP strategists gathered here for the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting believe that now that he's fallen below 50 percent in the venerable Gallup poll, Obama will be an asset to GOP candidates, particularly in conservative or swing states. [link]

 

Bay what? Guantanamo eyed for 9/11 trial
By John Doyle, David Seifman, and Charles Hurt, New York Post

The trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed won't be held in lower Manhattan and could take place in a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, sources said last night.

Administration officials said that no final decision had been made but that officials of the Department of Justice and the White House were working feverishly to find a venue that would be less expensive and less of a security risk than New York City.

The back-to-the-future Gitmo option was reported yesterday by Fox News and was not disputed by White House officials. [link]

NOAA, NASA: Water Vapor Largely Responsible for Global Warming
By Nate Kharrl, Eco Factory

An increase in atmospheric water vapor is responsible for at least a third of the average temperature increase since the early 1990s, say scientists at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Susan Soloman, the respected climate scientist who lead the research, says that this finding does not undermine man-made global warming theories. "Not to my mind it doesn't," she said. Soloman did point out that the research does allude to human emissions having a much smaller role in climate change than previously thought, and serves as a warning to climate modelers who "over-interpret the results from a few years one way or another." Despite Soloman's personally held belief, the NOAA study is expected to give further ammunition to climate skeptics working to draw public attention to perceived flaws in man-made global warming theories.

NASA scientist Eric Fetzer say that the new study created models much more accurate to past events than those previously used by climate change advocates, and proves that "water vapor is the big player in the atmosphere as far as climate is concerned." [link]

In California unfunded pension and health care liabilities for state workers top $100 billion, and the annual pension contribution has shot up from $320 million to $7.3 billion in less than a decade. In New York state, local governments may have to triple their annual pension contributions during the next six years, from $2.6 billion to $8 billion, according to the state comptroller.

That money will come from taxpayers. The average private-sector worker, who enjoys a lower salary and far lower retirement benefits than New York or California government workers, will have to work longer, retire later, and pay more so that his public-employee neighbors can enjoy the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. The taxpayers will also have to deal with worsening public services, since there will be less money to pay for things that might actually benefit the public.

Obama to End NASA Constellation Program
FOXNews.com

On the eve of the fullest moon of the year, NASA scientists were told they won't be able to visit any longer. In his new budget, President Obama plans to eliminate the space program's manned moon missions.

When the president releases his budget on Monday, a White House official confirmed on Thursday, there will be a big hole where funding for NASA's Constellation program used to be. Constellation is the umbrella program that includes the Ares rocket -- the replacement for the aging space shuttles. [link]

NASA will receive an additional $5.9 billion over five years, some of which will be used to extend the life of the International Space Station to 2020. The official said it also will be used to entice companies to build private spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the space station after the space shuttle retires.

Body found at Roanoke Co. landfill
By Amanda Codispoti, Roanoke Times

Amid acres of the Roanoke Valley's forgotten waste, a team of people looking for toddler Aveion Lewis on Wednesday found the body of a small child.

Police Chief Joe Gaskins could not say with certainty that the body found in a Western Roanoke County landfill was that of Aveion's. The medical examiner will identify the remains and a cause of death.

Roanoke Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell said Wednesday evening that he had previously planned to present a murder charge against the child's stepfather, Brandon Lockett, to the grand jury on Monday.

Now that police have discovered a child's body, that may change, Caldwell said. [link]

Obama Said to Seek $54 Billion in Nuclear-Power Loan Guarantees 
By Daniel Whitten and Hans Nichols, Bloomberg

Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama, acting on a pledge to support nuclear power, will propose tripling loan guarantees for new reactors to more than $54 billion, two people familiar with the plan said.

The additional loan guarantees in Obama’s budget, which will be released on Feb. 1, are part of an effort to bolster nuclear-power production after Obama called for doing so in his State of the Union address Jan. 27. Today, the Energy Department plans to announce creation of a panel to find a solution to storing the waste generated by nuclear plants.

“To create more of these clean-energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives,” Obama said in his speech. “That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear-power plants in this country. ” [link]

Obama Perpetuates the Myth of Bush as Free-Marketeer
By Ilya Somin, The Volokh Conspiracy

In the State of the Union, Obama continued to blame Bush and the Republicans for our current economic problems. This is understandable for two reasons. First,the GOP does deserve a good deal of blame, though my list of their misdeeds would probably look different from Obama’s. Second, pretty much any president in Obama’s position would do the same thing.

Much less defensible is Obama’s attempt to claim that the Republicans purused free market policies during the last eight years, and thereby caused the economic crisis ...

In reality, of course, the Bush-era GOP greatly expanded government control of the economy, including major increases in spending, regulation, and federal “investment” in education.

The Bush as free marketeer meme is an important prop in the Democrats’ case for massively expanding government control of the economy today. Logically, of course, it is possible to argue for such an expansion even if Bush did it too. Maybe he just didn’t go far enough, or didn’t calibrate his interventions as precisely as the Democrats plan to with theirs. From the standpoint of political rhetoric, however, it’s much easier for Obama to justify greatly expanded government if he can portray it as the opposite of his discredited predecessor’s policy. The gambit probably wouldn’t work if the public knew the facts about what Bush did. Obama, however, may be banking on widespread political ignorance, reinforced by the GOP’s image as the pro-free market party. He is far from the first politician to try to take advantage of ignorance. The Republicans have hardly been above doing the same thing when it suited their interests. But the fact that everyone does it doesn’t make it right. [link]

White House asks Justice Department to look for other places to hold 9/11 terror trial
By Kenneth R. Bazinet, Adam Lisberg and Samuel Goldsmith, New York Daily News

The White House ordered the Justice Department Thursday night to consider other places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to holding the trial in lower Manhattan.

The dramatic turnabout came hours after Mayor Bloomberg said he would "prefer that they did it elsewhere" and then spoke to Attorney General Eric Holder.

The order to consider new venues does not change the White House's position that Mohammed should be tried in civilian court. [link]

Obama coming to help Bennet in February
Associated Press

Denver — The White House has confirmed that President Barack Obama will visit Colorado in February to attend an event with U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet.

White House spokesman Adam Abrams said Thursday that the details are still being worked out.

Craig Hughes, Bennet's campaign manager, says Obama will be in Colorado to campaign for the senator, who is running for election. A date hasn't been set.

Bennet was appointed by fellow Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter to the Senate last year to complete Ken Salazar's term. Obama appointed Salazar as Interior secretary. [link]

Obama v. the Supremes
Alito wins the oral, and factual, argument.
Wall Street Journal editorial

We're not among those who think the Supreme Court is above criticism. Especially in recent decades as the judiciary has become more political, and has encroached on the powers of Congress and the executive, politicians in the other branches have an obligation to defend their powers. Mr. Obama may have exhibited bad manners in sandbagging the Justices without warning on national TV, but he has every right to disagree with their rulings.

But could a graduate of Harvard Law School at least get his facts right? "Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections," Mr. Obama averred. "Well, I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities."

Let's unpack the falsehoods. The Court didn't reverse "a century of law," but merely two more recent precedents, one from 1990 and part of another from 2003. Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce in 1990 had set the Court in a markedly new direction in limiting independent corporate campaign expenditures. This is the outlier case that needed to be overturned.

Mr. Obama is also a sudden convert to stare decisis. Does he now believe that all Court precedents of a certain duration are sacrosanct, such as Plessy v. Ferguson (separate but equal, 1896), which was overturned by Brown v. Board (1954)? Or Bowers v. Hardwick (a ban on sodomy, 1986), which was overturned by Lawrence v. Texas (2003)?

The President's claim about "foreign entities" bankrolling U.S. political campaigns is also false, since the Court did not overrule laws limiting such contributions. His use of "foreign" was a conscious attempt to inflame public and Congressional opinion against the Court. Coming from a President who fancies himself a citizen of the world, and who has gone so far as foreswear American exceptionalism, this leap into talk-show nativism is certainly illuminating. What will they think of that one in the cafes of Berlin?

Desperate Presidents do desperate things, and Mr. Obama's riff against the Supremes reveals a President who—let us try to follow Mr. Obama's admonition about changing the "tone" of our politics—lacks grace under pressure. [link requires subscription]

I might be able to provide a little insight. I'm a private sector laborer who isn't part of the local union. To some of my union co-workers I'm a leper. But I'm not gonna knock these people, most of them are just honest folks who want to make a living.

The corporations aren't really doing anything to decrease the need for unions, as far as I can tell. That's not the issue. What's happening is that the unions (especially the big umbrella outfits) are marginalizing themselves from the top down. It isn't about protecting honest working people anymore, that idea is anachronistic. Big labor today is just a political movement, and they're increasingly out of step with the rank and file who they rely on for dues.

And make no mistake, that's all a man with a lunch pail is to big labor: We're just the golden goose. They'll gut us at the drop of a hat. And we know it.

Of course there are still very passionate pro-union people on local levels ... but when you talk to them it becomes obvious that their fervor is really their religion. It's simple fundamentalism, and like all fundamentalists, they see outsiders as the enemy. If you don't share their beliefs, you're an anathema. They believe what they believe on faith, and evidence to the contrary simply has to be lies. It's simple: Grandaddy was a union man, daddy was a union man, and so am I. Gimme that old time religion.

As more and more people wake up to how destructive (or, at best, irrelevant) big labor is ... and as more and more of the old-timers retire ... there is less and less willingness to accept what we're told just based on faith. The younger people in the workplace are paying attention to the world around us (what the UAW has done to Detroit, how happy non-union Wal-Mart employees tend to be, how badly big labor wants to take away blind elections and right-to-work laws, etc) and we're more willing to question what the unions tell us. It's supposed to be a business relationship, not a religion. The union halls are supposed to be business offices, not churches. And if what the unions have to offer is a losing proposition, why should we buy what they're selling?

My two cents.

Cleta Mitchell, Washington's preeminent campaign finance attorney, rightly says that few for-profit corporations will jeopardize their commercial interests by engaging in partisan politics: Republicans, Democrats and independents buy Microsoft's and Pepsi's products. If for-profit corporations do plunge into politics, disclosure of their spending will enable voters to draw appropriate conclusions. Of course, political speech regulations radiate distrust of voters' abilities to assess unfettered political advocacy.

Mitchell says the court's decision primarily liberates nonprofit advocacy groups, such as the Sierra Club, which the FEC fined $28,000 in 2006. The club's sin was to distribute pamphlets in Florida contrasting the environmental views of the presidential and senatorial candidates, to the intended advantage of Democrats. FEC censors deemed this an illegal corporate contribution.  [link]

Staying the Course
The same agenda in more humble clothes
Wall Street Journal editorial

So much for all of that Washington talk about a midcourse change of political direction. If President Obama took any lesson from his party's recent drubbing in Massachusetts, and its decline in the polls, it seems to be that he should keep doing what he's been doing, only with a little more humility, and a touch more bipartisanship.

Mr. Obama's economic pitch ... differed little from last year, when the jobless rate was 7.2%. He offered a spirited defense of the stimulus, though the jobless rate is now 10%, and he promised more of the same this year, especially on "green jobs." He also offered some minor if welcome tax cuts for small business, and $30 billion in handouts for "community banks" to be able to lend more.

Yet at the same time, he couldn't resist more banker baiting, and he promised that he's determined to see tax rates rise for millions of Americans next year when the Bush rates are set to expire. He also pushed more exports while saying he'll raise taxes on some of our biggest exporters, otherwise known as multinationals that "ship our jobs overseas." Mr. Obama believes he can conjure jobs and a durable expansion from the private sector while waging political war on its animal spirits. It can't be done.

This reflects a larger problem, which is his belief that economic growth springs mainly from the genius of government. Thus Mr. Obama presented a vision of an economy soaring to new heights on "high-speed railroad" and "clean energy facilities" and 1,000 people making solar panels in California. He seems not to appreciate that what really drives growth are the millions of risks taken each day by millions of individuals, far from the politicking and earmarks of Congress or the Department of Energy. [link]

Democrats Put Lower Priority on Health Bill

Washington — With no clear path forward on major health care legislation, Democratic leaders in Congress effectively slammed the brakes on President Obama’s top domestic priority on Tuesday, saying they no longer felt pressure to move quickly on a health bill after eight months of setting deadlines and missing them.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, deflected questions about health care.

“We’re not on health care now,” Mr. Reid said. “We’ve talked a lot about it in the past.”

He added, “There is no rush,” and noted that Congress still had most of this year to work on the health bills passed in 2009 by the Senate and the House.

Mr. Reid said he and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, were working to map out a way to complete a health care overhaul in coming months. [link]

Fox Is The Most Trusted Name In News According To New Poll
By Noel Sheppard, NewsBusters

CNN might call itself the most trusted name in news, but a new poll found Americans think the Fox News Channel is the organization deserving this honor.

In fact, according to Public Policy Polling, FNC is the only national television news organization that more people trust than distrust.

A new poll asking Americans whether they trust each of the major television news operations in the country finds that the only one getting a positive review is Fox News. CNN does next best followed by NBC News, then CBS News, and finally ABC News.

49% of Americans say they trust Fox News to 37% who disagree. [link]

Condemnation of couple's property to proceed
By Sarah Bruyn Jones, Roanoke Times

The revelation that Carilion Clinic is not interested in the privately owned property adjacent to its growing medical park won't stop the condemnation of the property.

In a ruling Tuesday, Roanoke Circuit Court Judge William Broadhurst rejected a motion by the lawyer for B&B Holdings LLC and Stephanie and Jay Burkholder to reconsider the condemnation of their Reserve Avenue property.

Joe Waldo, the Burkholders' attorney, argued that the condemnation of the property would create blight instead of eliminating blight. The government is seeking to take the property and use it for economic development.

The Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority's attorney, Mark Loftis, argued that Carilion's lack of interest had no relevance to the issue of determining if the property could be condemned.

Waldo said that by forcing the Burkholders to sell and with no plan in place to develop the land, the property would sit vacant, resulting in a loss of tax revenue and a loss of jobs. Currently the flooring business Surfaces Inc. operates on the site, employs about 10 people and supports about 40 independent subcontractors.

"The property is going to be taken without any useful purpose," Waldo argued during court. Broadhurst sided with the housing authority, noting that the law does not require there to be a specific design in place for the use of a condemned property.

He said even if the new evidence of Carilion's lack of interest presented by B&B was true, it wouldn't have changed his November ruling that the government had the legal authority to condemn the property under Virginia's eminent domain laws. [link]

Remains likely Tech student's
Rex Bowman, Roanoke Times

Charlottesville -- The three-month search for Morgan Harrington ended in a remote hayfield Tuesday when an Albemarle County farmer checking his fences discovered what authorities are confident are the Virginia Tech student's skeletal remains.

How she died, when she died and even where she died are now the questions Virginia State Police are trying to find answers to as they scour the hayfield less than 10 miles south of Charlottesville, where Harrington was last seen alive after disappearing from a rock concert.

While state police are waiting for the medical examiner's office in Richmond to make a definitive identification of the body, the search for Harrington is now a search for her killer. [link]

Lawmakers give cold shoulder to Obama call for budget freeze
By Walter Alarkon and J. Taylor Rushing, The Hill

President Barack Obama’s proposal to freeze government spending is turning out to be a tough sell on Capitol Hill.

His liberal base warned Tuesday the three-year cap on most non-defense discretionary spending could hamper an economic recovery. Conservatives dismissed it as insufficient and just for show.

Even the bipartisan group of lawmakers who praised Obama’s plan, most of them centrists, questioned whether he has the fortitude to veto plump spending bills that fail to adhere to the limits he has set. They also wonder if he will take further steps to rein in the $12.3 trillion federal debt.

Top Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), offered tepid support for Obama’s plan, saying it wasn’t enough.

“Of course I’m glad, but now there’s got to be spending cuts,” said McCain, who called for a discretionary spending freeze during the 2008 presidential debates. “They’ve added nearly 20 percent in spending in the past year. So a freeze is the right thing to do, but we’ll have to see how it gets implemented.” [link]

One Year Later: The 40-Percent President
By Brad O'Leary, American Thinker

Today, Obama's policies face public approval of around 40% or less. In fact, across the board, from his policies to the candidates he supports, 40% or less of the American public back the Obama brand. As they say, the numbers don't lie.

Voters Running from Obama

* Only 43% of voters say they would vote to reelect Obama. (Zogby poll of 2,377 voters, January 19-21, 2010)

Voters Running from Obama-Backed Candidates

* Only 37% of Americans would vote to reelect their Obama-supported Democratic congressman. (Rasmussen poll of 800 likely voters, November 24, 2009)

Voters Oppose Obama's Health Care Plan

* Only 32% think Obama's health care plan is a good idea. (NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll of 1,008 adults, December 11-14, 2009)

* Only 13% of voters agree with the Obama administration's decision to bar C-SPAN from broadcasting negotiations about his health care bill. (Zogby poll of 2,377 voters, January 19-21, 2010)

* Only 12% of voters agree with the provision in Obama's health care bill that would force some married couples to pay $2,000 more per year for health insurance than unmarried couples. (Zogby poll of 2,377 voters, January 19-21, 2010)

* Only 21% of voters think that taxpayer dollars should be used to fund elective abortions. (Zogby poll of 2,377 voters, January 19-21, 2010) [link]