Government largesse

Many government retirees also get public paychecks

Thousands of government retirees across country return to work to collect public paychecks

DALLAS (AP) -- Double-dipping -- the well-established practice of public workers collecting government pensions and salaries at the same time -- has become a hot topic for lawmakers struggling with strained budgets.

Even as some states have begun curbing the practice, a review by The Associated Press found tens of thousands of state and public school employees drawing government salaries along with their pensions. In five states alone -- California, New York, Texas, Florida and Michigan -- at least 66,000 government retirees also receive taxpayer-funded paychecks.

One is engineer Maury Roos, who retired from the California Department of Water Resources with an annual pension of more than $113,000. He returned part-time within weeks.

Roos says he uses the extra money to go to engineering conferences and the state gets an experienced engineer.

The EU and CO2 scams of a feather

The EU dream has turned into a nightmare

The euro project was always based on a colossal act of make-believe - and now it is unravelling.

It was hard to know – as the danse macabre of the euro spirals towards its devastating denouement – which of last week’s utterances and events was the maddest. First, there was the speech by European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, in which, after admitting that this was the worst crisis the EU had ever faced, he renewed his wish for it to impose a tax on “financial transactions”, to provide Brussels with what has been estimated by Open Europe, the independent think tank, at up to £70 billion a year.

Since Britain’s share of the EU’s financial markets is 72 per cent, the cost to the UK would thus be up to £50 billion. But that wouldn’t last long because, as the Commission itself admits, such a tax would soon send the financial industry fleeing out of the EU, destroying the biggest single earner in the UK economy.

George Osborne may be right in saying that Britain would veto Mr Barroso’s proposal. But the very fact that the ex-Maoist in charge of the Commission should suggest anything so suicidal is a measure of just how surreal this crisis is becoming.

Equally bizarre was the spectacle of Germany’s MPs defying the wishes of most of the German people by supporting the EU’s £380 billion bail-out fund, to pour much of it into the bottomless pit of Greek debt, which has reduced the Greek people to a state of catatonic trauma. The peoples of the EU’s richest and poorest countries are thus equally powerless in the face of what amounts to a bureaucratic dictatorship of unelected apparatchiks – who, in a vain bid to save their pet project, are now talking about the need for a further bail-out fund of £1.7 trillion,

The truth about the euro project is that it was always based on a colossal act of make-believe, launched in defiance of all economic and political reality. And as history and storytelling have shown us again and again, when human beings, individually or collectively, attempt to act out a fantasy, there is a very clear and identifiable pattern to what follows.

The “fantasy cycle”, as I have called it elsewhere, unfolds through five stages. The tragedy begins with the Anticipation Stage, when nervous energy tempts the protagonist into some enticingly hubristic course of action. Now we enter a Dream Stage, when for a while, all seems to go well. But because the fantasy defies the reality of the world around it, things move into a Frustration Stage, where it all starts to go wrong. This prompts those in the obsessive grip of the make-believe to push their fantasy even further out of touch with reality, leading them to the Nightmare Stage, where, as reality crowds in on them, everything goes wrong. This leads to the fifth and final stage: Nemesis, or an “explosion into reality”, where the fantasy destroys itself,

The story of the euro, as the supreme symbol of the lunatic drive to weld Europe together into a wholly undemocratic political union, is now entering its Nightmare Stage. People like Barroso predictably claim that the only way forward is more of the same: “more Europe”. We are witnessing the unfolding of one of the great archetypal patterns that shape human affairs, one we can compare to the story of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The EU’s leaders frenziedly rush about trying to stop their magic broomstick running amok, as it fills their house with ever more buckets full of debt. The hapless victim of the old fable was eventually saved by the return of the sorcerer, who knew the magic spell that could avert final disaster. In the case of the EU, there is no sorcerer. There seems to be no means by which Europe’s leaders can halt the chaos that now threatens to bring down the euro, much of the world’s financial system – and, ultimately, even the EU itself.

Clueless Huhne turns his back on the only way we’ll keep our lights on

With immaculate timing, our Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Chris Huhne, has again demonstrated why it is hard to think of any minister in history less fitted for his job. Last month, it was announced that 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas had been discovered, embedded in the shales under Lancashire, which could herald an energy resource even larger than North Sea oil and gas. Thanks to technical advances pioneered in the US, which already draws 20 per cent of its gas from shale, we might be looking at reserves big enough to power Britain’s economy for centuries to come.

Yet that same day, it was reported that Huhne had been telling an audience of Lib Dems that we must halt the “dash for gas”, because this would prevent us from meeting our commitment under the Climate Change Act to cut our CO2 emissions by 80 per cent within 40 years. He even cited approvingly an absurdly mendacious propaganda film produced by US global warming zealots vilifying shale gas.

So lost is Huhne in his green dreamworld that he somehow imagines that we can centre our future energy policy on building thousands of wind turbines. Faced with the discovery of vast reserves of cheap gas, any minister who knew his job would say: “Forget about those ludicrously expensive, inefficient and unreliable windmills, and go flat out for building enough gas-fired power stations to keep Britain’s lights on in the years ahead, when we will lose 14 coal-fired and nuclear power stations that currently supply 40 per cent of our average electricity needs.”

Of course, we are compelled to waste £140 billion on those wind turbines due to our commitment to the EU that by 2020 we will generate nearly a third of our electricity from “renewables”. But among the countless practical aspects of his job that Huhne clearly doesn’t begin to understand is that the more turbines we build, the more we will need new gas-fired power stations of the same capacity, just to provide instant back-up for all those times when there is insufficient wind to feed more than a derisory amount of power into the grid.

So we will have to build those gas-fired stations anyway – at vast expense, to be kept wastefully running all the time, emitting more CO2 than anything notionally saved by the wind farms – just to indulge the babyish dreams of Huhne and the EU. Crazier still, if Huhne manages to stop the exploitation of our new shale gas resources, he will be condemning us, as North Sea supplies run out, to importing ever more gas and oil from abroad, at a cost that a government report predicted in 2008 could soon be £40 billion a year.

So obsessed is Mr Huhne with all the fluffy rubbish associated with the “climate change” part of his job description that he has never shown the faintest sign of grasping the practicalities of the “energy” bit. He has become very much a luxury we cannot afford. But so too, it must be said, is our commitment to the EU to build those useless windmills.

The core belief of the left is twofold: humans are destroyers; we are doomed

Science, Lies, and Videotape

By Clarice Feldman

It is the elite perception that conservatives are beetle-browed, anti-science nutters wedded to faith-based, unverifiable beliefs eschewed by the more sophisticated, scientific-thinking left.

I call this the Garofolo Theory to memorialize this darling of the left's observation this week:

Herman Cain is probably well liked by some of the Republicans because it hides the racist elements of the Republican Party. Conservative movement and tea party movement, one in the same.

So there you have it: the classic damned if you do (in this case, support black candidates), damned if you don't (support them). Conveniently for Garofalo, the charge is utterly unfalsifiable as made, since the lack of evidence to her way of thinking is itself evidence.

But beyond the self-congratulatory nonsense exemplified by Janeane Garofolo, the history of who believes in science and who opposes scientific thinking and methods is far more muddled. There's plenty of evidence that the clown shoes belong on the other (political) foot, and this week, because of the work of Watts Up With That and videotape analysis, we can establish that not only is the left unscientific, but it also relies on demonstrably false "evidence" to make its arguments.

Blogger Judith Curry is the inspiration for my decision to strike at the "conservatives are anti-science" meme. She pulled together posts where writers and readers debated the issue.

Among the positions progressives have taken which are false and unsupported by science are the following examples I culled there from posts by Mike Hanson of Purdue University and Ken Green. Collectively these men observe these fallacies supported by those who call themselves progressives:

• DDT causes cancer;
• Alar causes cancer;
• Polar bears are drowning as the icebergs melt;
• Video displays or cell phones cause cancer;
• There are grave risks to hydraulic fracturing;
• Misuse of toxology -- hexavalent chromium contamination in Hinkley, California; amaranth, saccharin;
• Nuclear winter;
• Claims that there's a giant plastic cocoon in the middle of the ocean;
• BPA and Phthalates are carcinogens and endocrine disruptors;
• Claims that organic food is safer and healthier than conventionally grown foods;
• Claims that eating locally grown foods is better for the environment than foods grown further away;
• Cloth grocery bags are better for the environment than paper or plastic ones;
• Claims of species' endangerment based on faked or flawed evidence;
• Claims that climate models have predictive power and that individual weather events represent climate change;
• Claims that frogs died because of climate change;
• Claims that there were alligator penis malformations from endocrine disruptors;
• Claims that bees were dying as a result of climate change;
• Claims that butterflies were dying from Bt crops;
• Unsubstantiated claims about low dose radiation hazards.

I'm sure you could add to their list. Generally, the "dangers" the left invents or exaggerates involve modern technology, existing energy sources, and large-scale production. They represent a strange amalgam of Rousseau and Luddite notions and hark back to an ideal, never-existing "state of nature."

Mike Hanson continues in his post at Curry's blog:

The National Academy of Science states that "no dose of radiation is safe" but they have no data to back this statement up, only a hypothesis they cannot test. The linear threshold model is a liberal (no pun intended) application of the precautionary principal as you cannot conduct an epidemiological study of radiation exposure at low levels of exposure and get any meaningful data. This being the case, the linear threshold model for radiation exposure is not science, it's a philosophical argument.

Manipulation of "science" is VERY mainstream among liberals. You can hardly pick up a lefty magazine or newspaper and not see it. The left "science deniers" are similar in pathology to Christian millenarianists who await the Apocalypse. They pinpoint a date for wholesale destruction, and they're always wrong. But unlike Christian fundamentalists, liberals have the advantageous distinction of never needing to say sorry. In fact, the worst of them, people like John Holdren and Paul Erlich go onto serve in very high places in the scientific community.

The debate at Curry's site is lengthy and thorough. At best, it seems, one might argue that both sides of the political spectrum have exhibited the desire to use science for sociopolitical ends, but it seems to me undeniable that the claim that the left is scientific and the right is not must fall.

This week we have more ammunition for this point of view. On the one hand, we have President Obama ignoring his own scientists and attacking Texas Governor Perry for being a climate skeptic:

On Sunday, President Obama gave Gov. Rick Perry heat for being a climate skeptic, calling him "a governor whose state is on fire, denying climate change." But, Obama seems to be denying the conclusions of his own government scientists when it comes to the cause of the Texas droughts. But, earlier this month, Dr. Robert Hoerling, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research meteorologist, who served as the lead author of the U.S. Climate Change Science Plan Synthesis and Assessment, clearly and emphatically dispelled the notion that climate change has anything to do with droughts in Texas.

Then there's Congressman Henry Waxman justifying the waste of a half billion dollars on the Solyndra solar panel factory scam: "Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., railed at Friday's hearing, "We need to face reality and stop denying science."

And the editors of the New York Times, grossly exaggerating the potential contribution of solar energy:

Are New York Times editorial writers complete innumerate nincompoops? Okay, silly question. The answer is a self-evident truth. This sentence finally made me spit my coffee: "Recent studies suggest that, globally, renewable energy will grow faster than any other energy source in the coming decades."

This is simple-minded drivel that wouldn't make a sub-moron's mouth twitch if he'd sat through the first day of a statistics class. All of these studies are based on pure percentage growth rates -- not absolute amounts of energy produced by source. It is the same kind of logic as someone who wonders how a swimmer can drown in a Minnesota lake that averages only two feet deep. Example: if you go from one unit of something to two, look! Wow! A 100 percent growth rate! While if you go from 100 to 105 units of something, we'll that's only a five percent growth rate, even though it five times the amount of end product as the source with the 100 percent growth rate.

All of the renewable energy studies and forecasts play that game because the renewable output is starting from such a low base, and never compare the actual amount of energy growth with other sources. ... According to the BP data, guess which energy source over the last 10 years produced the largest total amount of new energy in the world? Coal. A somewhat inconvenient truth. A student who tried to pass off the Times claim in Statistics 101 would get an F on the exam. (And this leaves aside the point John makes, namely, that nearly all "renewable" energy sources require huge government subsidies. Isn't the social welfare state unsustainable enough? How does the Times think that scaling up renewable energy won't also end in bankruptcy?

All this takes place in a week when a key scientist resigned from the American Physical Society in protest of the Society's stance on global warming (italics in the original):

You don't have to look far to see that impeccable scientific standards can go hand-in-hand with skepticism about global warming. Ivar Giaever, a 1973 Nobel laureate in physics , resigned this month as a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) to protest the organization's official position that evidence of manmade climate change is "incontrovertible'' and cause for alarm. In an e-mail explaining his resignation , Giaever challenged the view that any scientific assertion is so sacred that it cannot be contested.

"In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves,'' Giaever wrote, incredulous, "but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?''

Nor does Giaever share the society's view that carbon emissions threaten "significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security, and human health.'' In fact, the very concept of a "global'' temperature is one he questions. . . [sic]

And all this in the same week when the EPA's own inspector general called the greenhouse gas science used by the agency seriously flawed. The endangerment finding in question will cost American consumers $300-$400 billion a year, boost energy prices considerably, and destroy "hundreds of jobs," says Oklahoma Senator Inhofe, who this week released the IG Report.

[T]he scientific basis, on which the administration's endangerment finding for greenhouse gases hinged, violated the EPA's own peer review procedure. In a report released Wednesday (at the request of Inhofe, dating back to April) the inspector general found that the EPA failed to follow the Data Quality Act and its own peer review process when it issued the determination that greenhouse gases cause harm to "public health and welfare."

"I appreciate the inspector general conducting a thorough investigation into the Obama-EPA's handling of the endangerment finding for greenhouse gases," Inhofe said. "This report confirms that the endangerment finding, the very foundation of President Obama's job-destroying regulatory agenda, was rushed, biased, and flawed. It calls the scientific integrity of EPA's decision-making process into question and undermines the credibility of the endangerment finding."

Much of the folderol of calling witchcraft science takes place behind the scenes -- as in the EPA endangerment finding -- but sometimes the fraud takes place before our very eyes. In his latest big presentation to the world on global warming, "The Climate Reality Project" -- i.e., the latest iteration of the hoax that made him a billionaire -- Al Gore presented a falsified experiment by Bill Nye ("the science guy"), which Gore called "high school physics," to make his point.

The video was not labeled a dramatization, and Anthony Watts of the renowned climate blog Watts Up With That?, taking enormous pains to duplicate the materials used and the techniques followed by careful examination of the video, establishes that this is a "staged production from start to finish." You can see Gore's and Nye's hocus-pocus unveiled before your eyes, with frame-by-frame analysis. Of course, the pair consider you stupid anyway, for, as Watts notes:

Of course the whole Climate 101 CO2 experiment is questionable to begin with, because it doesn't properly emulate the physical mechanisms involved in heating our planet. Note the heat lamps used, likely one of these based on the red color we see in the lamp fixture:

Heat lamps like this produce visible red light and short wave infrared (SWIR is 1.4-3 µm wavelength). As we know from the classic greenhouse effect, glass blocks infrared so none of the SWIR was making it into the cookie jar. All that would do is heat the glass. John Tyndall's 1850′s experiments used rock salt windows, which transmit infrared, for exactly that reason. Adding insult to injury, CO2 has no SWIR absorption bands. What CO2 does have though is higher density than air. The gas in the cookie jars was primarily heated by conduction in contact with the SWIR-heated glass.

Moreover, the CO2 injection in one cookie jar would raise it from 0.04% CO2 to very near 100% CO2 which is hardly comparable to the atmosphere going from 0.03% to 0.04% CO2 during the industrial age. Gore's team provides no indication of the concentration of CO2 in the jar, that's hardly scientific.

James Delingpole of The Telegraph credits the internet for blowing Gore's and Nye's cover and exposing the establishment's fake science generally:

The point that can't be made often enough about the internet is that it represents our best and perhaps only hope of outmanoeuvring the lies, bullying and control of the political establishment. Nowhere is this truer than with the Man Made Global Warming scam. Had it not been for the internet, Climategate would not have been broken, nor the earlier work of McIntyre and McKitrick disseminated, nor a community created in which scientific experts (and interested laymen) all over the world were able to discuss climate science freely without the risk of being defunded, or having their journal closed down or being ostracised by their colleagues. But though the internet was a necessary condition for this to happen, it was not a sufficient one. The other vitally important ingredient was the trainspotterish diligence of men and women like Anthony Watts, and Richard North and Donna Laframboise and Joanna Nova.

Why is this trainspotterish diligence so essential? Because one of the main planks of the defence used by the climate alarmist establishment against sceptics is that they have all the expertise on their side, all the PhDs, all the notable scientific institutions, and that therefore their "authority" trumps the feeble witterings of all those nonentities, crazed Oxford English graduates, and other such verminous specimens who dare to speak out against the mighty, unimpeachable wisdom.

What the internet has proved in these debates, time and again - from Glaciergate to Amazongate to Polarbeargate - is that when the rebellious amateurs of the sceptical blogosphere go head to head with the climate establishment, the bloggers always win. Not as a result of invective or snarkiness or any of the other things that bloggers also do quite well: but on the actual hard science and raw evidence. Look at almost any tussle between, say, WUWT on the one side, RealClimate on the other, and you'll notice that when it finally boils down to the irreducible truth, the side that emerges triumphant is the sceptical one, not the alarmist one. It's partly because the facts are on our side (so we jolly well ought to win if we're doing our job even remotely properly), but also because, being the underfunded underdogs, we've been forced to raise our game to a higher standard than that of our rather complacent, smug opposition.

Well, as the world economy weakens and it turns out that we are sitting on enormous quantities of natural gas and oil, it grows more likely that this childish nonsense -- which, probably not coincidentally, has proven a financial boon for Democrat-backers, too -- shall pass. But faster, please, so we can get back to being the world's powerhouse.

The left didn't mean it to be a joke but a trial balloon instead.

Column: Giving Gov. Perdue's idea a second thought

RThe curse of our media and education system

Mainstream Media is Too Lazy, Indifferent & Biased to Challenge Leftist Demagogues

Liberals Are a Thousand Times Smarter Than Conservatives—Just Ask Them!

Liberal judges at work...see their handiwork

Man Arrested For 65th Time After Holding Woman And Her Children Host

Pol Pot comes to America...

Roseanne Barr: Behead Bankers, Rich Who Won't Give Up Wealth

The hallmark of the left is not the urge to solve problems but rather to vent anger, hatred and retribution. Do you need anymore evidence then the history of the 20th century.

Mugged by reality.

Afghan president says talks with Taliban useless

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who for years pushed for reconciliation with the Taliban, now says attempts to negotiate with the insurgent movement are futile and efforts at dialogue should focus instead on neighboring Pakistan.

Karzai explained in a videotaped speech released by his office Saturday that he changed his views about trying to talk to the Taliban after a suicide bomber, claiming to be a peace emissary sent by the insurgents, killed former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani at his home on Sept. 20. Rabbani was leading Karzai's effort to broker peace with the Taliban.

"Their messengers are coming and killing. ... So with whom should we make peace?" Karzai said Friday to a gathering of the nation's top religious leaders that was videotaped.

"I cannot find Mullah Mohammad Omar," Karzai said, referring to the Taliban's one-eyed leader. "Where is he? I cannot find the Taliban council. Where is it?

"I don't have any other answer except to say that the other side for this negotiation is Pakistan," Karzai said.

Most of the Taliban leadership is thought to be living in Pakistan, and its governing council — known as the Quetta Shura — is based in the southern Pakistani city of the same name. It has long been believed that the Pakistani government has sheltered and influenced the group.

Afghanistan said Saturday it had evidence that Rabbani's assassination was planned by Taliban figures living in Quetta.

Afghan Interior Minister Besmillah Mohammadi went even further, telling Afghan lawmakers Saturday that Pakistan's intelligence service, known as the ISI, was involved in Rabbani's killing — an allegation that Pakistan has denied. "Without any doubt, ISI, is involved in this," Mohammadi said.

Last week, U.S. officials leveled accusations of their own, saying Pakistan's spy agency assisted the Haqqani network — a militant group allied with al-Qaida and the Taliban — in attacks on Western targets in Afghanistan. It was the most serious allegation yet of Pakistani duplicity in the 10-year war.

The Pakistan-based Haqqani network has been described as the top security threat in Afghanistan.

NATO said Saturday it captured Haji Mali Khan, a senior Haqqani leader inside Afghanistan, describing his arrest as a "significant milestone" in disrupting the terror group's operations.

The group has been blamed for hundreds of attacks, including a 20-hour siege of the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters last month.

The United States and other members of the international community have in the past accused Pakistan of allowing the Taliban, and the Haqqanis in particular, to maintain safe havens in the country's tribal areas along the Afghan border — particularly in North Waziristan.

An Afghan government statement issued earlier in the past week said Pakistan had failed to take steps to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries. It added that if Pakistan's intelligence service is using the Taliban against Afghanistan, then the Afghan government needs to have negotiations with Pakistan, "not the Taliban."

Khan, the Haqqani leader being held by NATO, was seized Tuesday during an operation in eastern Paktia province's Jani Khel district, which borders Pakistan, the alliance said.

It was the most significant capture of a Haqqani leader in Afghanistan, and could dent the group's ability to operate along the porous border with Pakistan's lawless tribal areas.

Shortly after NATO's announcement, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid denied in a message to Afghan media that Khan had been arrested but provided no evidence that he was free.

NATO described Khan as an uncle of Siraj and Badruddin Haqqani, two sons of the network's aging leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani.

"He was one of the highest ranking members of the Haqqani network and a revered elder of the Haqqani clan," NATO said of Khan.

During the operation Tuesday, Khan surrendered without resistance and NATO forces also arrested his deputy and bodyguard, along with a number of other insurgents, the alliance said.

"The Haqqani network and its safe havens remain a top priority for Afghan and coalition forces," NATO concluded.

The NATO statement said security forces have conducted more than 500 operations so far in 2011 in an effort to disrupt the Haqqani network leadership, resulting in the deaths of 20 operatives and the capture of nearly 300 insurgent leaders and 1,300 suspected Haqqani insurgents.

In a related development, Afghanistan's intelligence service said Saturday it has given Pakistan hard evidence that Rabbani's assassination was planned in the southern outskirts of Quetta where key Taliban leaders are based.

The Taliban have not claimed responsibility for killing Rabbani.

Lutifullah Mashal, a spokesman for the Afghan intelligence service, provided the first details about where the assassination was allegedly planned at a news conference.

"The place where Professor Rabbani's killing was planned is a town called Satellite near Quetta, Pakistan," Mashal told reporters. "The key person involved in the assassination of Rabbani has been arrested and he has provided lots of strong evidence about where and how it was planned. We have given all that evidence to the Pakistan embassy."

The Afghan intelligence documents handed over to Pakistan's embassy in Kabul include the address, photographs and a layout of a house in Satellite, Mashal said. He said the Pakistanis also have been provided with the names of individuals who discussed Rabbani's assassination at the house in Satellite.

Satellite Town is an upscale residential area very close to the city center and it is known to residents that Afghan Taliban live there.

Mashal would not disclose the identity of the person in custody, saying only that he was a second-tier figure within the Taliban hierarchy.

He said additional details would be released soon by a commission set up to investigate Rabbani's death.

Asked what Afghanistan expected Pakistan to do with the information, Mashal referred the question to the Afghan Foreign Ministry and the commission.

"This is all concrete evidence that nobody can ignore," he said.

___

Is it? As a layman it sounds worthwhile to me.

Is It Time to Accept Food Irradiation?

I have no idea what to make of this but thought you'd want to know

Climate fix technical test put on hold

Firdt it was a good idea and then it's not...government idiocy

Compulsory retirement age at 65 fully abolished

The default retirement age in the UK has been fully abolished after being phased out from April this year.

New legislation stops employers from compulsorily retiring workers once they reach the age of 65.

When the government intrudes in a contract it's never neutral.

All in the effort to destroy our Second Amendment rights

New Fast and Furious docs released by White House

WASHINGTON - Late Friday, the White House turned over new documents in the Congressional investigation into the ATF "Fast and Furious" gunwalking scandal.

The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell - who led Fast and Furious - and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O'Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O'Reilly are long time friends.

Newly-released White House documents (pdf)

ATF agents say that in Fast and Furious, their agency allowed thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to be sold to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels. At least two of the guns turned up at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.

ATF Manager says he shared Fast and Furious with the White House

The email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. They discuss ATF's gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O'Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office's gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as "letting guns walk."

A lawyer for the White House wrote Congressional investigators: "none of the communications between ATF and the White House revealed the investigative law enforcement tactics at issue in your inquiry, let alone any decision to allow guns to 'walk.'"

ATF Fast and Furious: Who at the White House knew?

Among the documents produced: an email in which ATF's Newell sent the White House's O'Reilly an "arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up." The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.

Newell email (09.03.10) (pdf)
Arizona Gunrunner Impact Team chart (pdf)

In response, O'Reilly wrote on Sept. 3, 2010 "The arrow chart is really interesting - and - no surprise - implies at least that different (Drug Trafficking Organizations) in Mexico have very different and geographically distinct networks in the US for acquiring guns. Did last year's TX effort develop a similar graphic?"

O'Reilly email (09.03.10) (pdf)

The White House counsel who produced the documents stated that some records were not included because of "significant confidentiality interests."

(Credit: CBS)

Also included are email photographs including images of a .50 caliber rifle (left) that Newell tells O'Reilly "was purchased in Tucson, Arizona (part of another OCDTF case)." OCDTF is a joint task force that operates under the Department of Justice and includes the US Attorneys, ATF, DEA, FBI, ICE and IRS. Fast and Furious was an OCDTF case.

An administration source would not describe the Tucson OCDTF case. However, CBS News has learned that ATF's Phoenix office led an operation out of Tucson called "Wide Receiver." Sources claim ATF allowed guns to "walk" in that operation, much like Fast and Furious.

Congressional investigators for Republicans Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) have asked to interview O'Reilly by September 30. But the Administration informed them that O'Reilly is on assignment for the State Department in Iraq and unavailable.

One administration source says White House national security staffers were "briefed on the toplines of ongoing federal efforts, but nobody in White House knew about the investigative tactics being used in the operation, let alone any decision to let guns walk."

Sharpton's Atlanta HQ admits handing out possibly bogus stimulus check forms

As little freedom as they are forced to acknowledge.

Cuban government authorizes citizens to buy, sell cars

However, even though the new law states that owners can act "without any prior authorization from any entity," it doesn't mean it's open season: there remain limits on things like importing and ownership of cars. Castro said the law will help ensure the survival of Cuban Communism.

Is the sham coming undone?

EPA Inspector General Questions GHG Emissions Science, Issa Attacks On All Fronts

The ballot box or rule by fiat

Brown weighs bill challenging ban on affirmative action

The measure could put race and gender back into the admissions process at California's public universities 15 years after the state's voters banned affirmative action.

Reporting from Sacramento and Los Angeles -- In the next 10 days, Gov. Jerry Brown must decide whether to sign a bill that could put race and gender back into the admissions process at California's public universities 15 years after the state's voters banned affirmative action.

The proposed law would allow the University of California and California State University systems to "consider" applicants' race, gender and household income to diversify student bodies. The author says he crafted it to avoid conflict with Proposition 209, the ballot measure voters passed in 1996 that prohibited preferential treatment of minority groups by the state.

But Proposition 209's backers contend that the measure now before Brown is a clear attempt to undermine the law and say they will sue to overturn it if the governor signs it.

Brown has argued in court that Proposition 209, which is enshrined in California's Constitution, violates the U.S. Constitution. But the new legislation, which triggered a controversial satirical bake sale by conservative students at UC Berkeley this week, presents the governor with a quandary because he has also long argued that the people's decisions at the ballot box are sacrosanct.

"I believe he disagrees with 209," said Sharon Browne, a principal attorney at the Pacific Legal Center, which has defended the law over the years. "But I would hope that he understands that it's really up to the people to amend 209, not the Legislature."

The bill is not the only hot-button proposal involving higher education that Brown must sign or veto by Oct. 9. He also must decide whether to allow illegal immigrants to qualify for publicly funded scholarships at state universities.

The governor's office declined to comment on the bills but said Brown's views of Proposition 209 are outlined in a legal brief he filed in July, urging a federal court to overturn the measure.

State Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina), author of the race and gender bill, is a critic of Proposition 209. State data show the number of black and Latino students admitted to the UC system dipped immediately after the initiative's passage, and though such admissions have since risen, Hernandez says they remain too low.

"Minority students are not getting an equal shake in our state, and as an elected official I'm going to do everything in my power to change that," Hernandez said, "even if it means having this uncomfortable discussion."

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a previous version of Hernandez's bill, saying it flouted Proposition 209.

The lawmaker's current measure would permit consideration of factors such as race and gender by public universities to create a "multifactored, diverse student body." It would urge the schools to weigh those factors to the maximum extent permitted by a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed narrowly tailored affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School. That decision allowed consideration of race on a case-by-case basis and without quotas.

Hernandez's bill would ban preference for any candidate based on those factors (it is silent on other areas, such as state contracting, that Proposition 209 affected). But the delicate legal dance in the bill, SB 185, has confused some educators, and the universities are reacting cautiously.

"Our current admissions practices are compliant with the Constitution and will continue to comply with the Constitution, whether or not SB 185 is signed into law," said David M. Birnbaum, chief deputy general counsel for the UC system.

Ward Connerly, the former UC regent who was a key architect of Proposition 209, said the Hernandez proposal is a clear attempt to undermine the law's blanket ban on affirmative action. The bill, he contended, attempts "to create an illusion that there is some distinction between considering race and giving a preference."

As governor and in his last job, as attorney general, Brown has cited the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in contending that Proposition 209 should be overturned by the federal courts.

The initiative survived legal challenges after it passed, but Brown has filed papers supporting a 2009 lawsuit by a civil rights group that argues that California should be able to practice the narrow affirmative action that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in the Michigan case, Grutter vs. Bollinger.

The Supreme Court "found that states have a compelling interest in achieving the benefits that flow from a diverse student body in public universities, in addition to the interest

of remedying the effects of past discrimination," the state's Department of Justice said in the July brief filed in Brown's name with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Yvette Felarca, an organizer for the civil rights group whose challenge to Proposition 209 Brown supported, said it was critical that the governor sign SB 185. "If he vetoes it," she said, "it will be a real betrayal."

Hernandez's bill passed the Legislature with little public notice in late August. It won the endorsement of groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and the University of California Student Assn.

On Tuesday, the latter group, made up of student governments, used phone banks at campuses across California to urge Brown to sign the bill. In protest, conservative students at UC Berkeley held a mock bake sale with items labeled and priced by race and gender.

The event, and the ensuing counter-protests by supporters of affirmative action, drew international news coverage and thrust SB 185 into the spotlight.

Connerly predicted that Brown would sign the bill because of its support among politicians who represent the growing Latino electorate. "You can't look at this bill without seriously looking at the politics," he said.

Shawn Lewis, president of the Berkeley College Republicans, said he was pleasantly surprised at all the attention the issue has received since his group's bake sale.

"I don't know if Gov. Brown wants this sort of a headache," he said.

Joey Freeman, a UC Berkeley junior from Sherman Oaks and a spokesman for the university's student government, said he hopes the governor signs the bill because it could help diversify his campus.

He acknowledged that the governor is under pressure from both sides.

"It's got to be harder," he said in an interview the day after the protests, "now that this has happened."

One unspoken aim of these actions is to dispirit the voters into saying it doesn't matter if I vote so the technocrat/elites get to rule unopposed.

By considering race and ethnicity do that mean that they will be able to discriminate against Asians?

Go Joe...

Obama, Arizona Sheriff Arpaio clash over immigration

Arpaio, interviewed on Arizona television, said he resented the president's suggestion that he engages in racial profiling.

"I'm an equal-opportunity guy," Arpaio said. "I enforce all the laws."

The Left lies for effect

Al Sharpton Wisconsin Milk Story Sours

By Kyle Olson

Public employee unions and their apologists will tell any tale to elicit sympathy for their cause.

A good example is the Rev. Al Sharpton, who now remarkably hosts a nightly show on MSNBC. He recently used a portion of his program to claim that state education cuts forced one Wisconsin school district to eliminate milk from morning snacks for elementary students.

"Governor Scott Walker's budget cuts mean some kids go without," Sharpton said, according to an article posted on PolitiFact Wisconsin.

Neither Sharpton nor his National Action Network responded to calls from fact-checkers who were seeking evidence to back up the claim. That's not surprising.

As it turned out, Sharpton should have checked his sources.

According to the Baraboo district superintendent and the school board president and vice president, milk was eliminated from the morning snack because officials were concerned that kids were drinking too much of it in the morning. They had been getting a half-pint carton during breakfast, the morning break and lunch. That seems like a lot of dairy product for small children, even in Wisconsin.

The officials said they were also concerned about the amount of wasted milk, and the administrative time needed to track how much milk was being consumed.

These decisions were made before Walker's education budget was finalized. The fact that school administrators expected budget cuts to affect the milk program was more or less an afterthought, according to the school officials.

But hey, who cares about facts when there's a good opportunity for a Sharpton smear, right?