Question

It’s time to test your knowledge of history. 

Who said the following (emphasis is mine):

The First Amendment, however, does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State …. Otherwise the state and religion would be aliens to each other-hostile, suspicious, and even unfriendly.

I’ll be taking guesses thru the weekend.

UPDATE: No takers eh?  Bummer.

Anyway, the answer is THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, in Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306.

OK…

so I was wrong.

More Disgusting than Forced Confessions 

Word from Iran is that the authorities have forced Neda’s father to appear on state television and say that the protestors, and not the regime, killed her.

It doesn’t get a whole lot worse than this.

Never

…have I been quite so disgusted.

Eight Republican Defectors Pass Economy Destroying Bill

FIRE ALL THE INCUMBENTS!

And Here It Comes

Apparently the Ahmadinejad/Khamenei regime is now following up their threat from earlier – that the protesters would be responsible if there were bloodshed – by making sure that bloodshed occurs.

We’ve been waiting, horrified, for Tehran’s Tianenmen Square.   Today is the day.

May the mullahs, the IRGC, the basiji, and all those Hizbullah thugs be damned to hell, with Khamenei and The Monkey leading the way.

Hopefully they’ll choke on pork hot dogs.

 

Flight 93 Blogburst: A Door Swinging Shut

Alec writes:

Two blogburst posts in a week? This one is running up against a Tuesday deadline (when the EPA’s comment period ends) so there isn’t much choice.

The EPA’s proposed war against CO2 is tangentially related to our issue. It is state imposition of green religion, while we are facing state imposition of an Islamic shrine on the Flight 93 crash site. These tangential relations are one way to spread the word, and I figure a bunch of you are probably concerned about the imposition of green religion too.

EPA comment period closes Tues: tell ‘em no state-establishment of CO2-phobic religion
Only a couple more days to let the EPA know what you think of its proposed war against CO2. Just click on the little yellow “add comments” balloon. The following is a comment (ending at “sincerely”) that you can copy and paste. (If you choose to roll your own, feel free to leave it here too.)

Dear EPA:

There is overwhelming statistical evidence that the primary driver of natural temperature change is solar-magnetic activity, yet the solar flux is completely omitted as an influence on climate in all four IPCC assessments and in the Obama administration’s new “Climate Change Impacts in the United Sates” report. This omission is rationalized on grounds that the existing theories of how solar activity affects climate are still formative. The scientific method rejects this rationalization. Observational evidence is supposed to trump theory, not vice versa, but the IPCC is using theory (its distrust of existing theories of the mechanism by which solar-magnetic activity drives global temperature), as an excuse for ignoring the overwhelming evidence that solar-magnetic DOES drive global temperature. Not all religions are anti-scientific, but the demonstrably anti-scientific nature of CO2 alarmism proves that it IS religion, not science.

EPA regulations are supposed to be science based. Imposing restrictions based on an anti-scientific religious doctrine would not just violate the EPA’s mandate, but would violate the constitutional prohibition on state establishment of religion.

Solar-magnetic warming: theory and evidence

The sunspot-temperature theory is actually looking pretty solid. It is known that a strong solar-magnetic flux shields the earth from high energy cosmic rays which otherwise, according to the theory of Henrik Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, would ionize the atmosphere, seeding cloud formation. Thus the solar wind in effect blows the clouds away, giving the earth a sunburn.

Whatever the precise mechanism, researchers have found that solar-magnetic activity “explains” statistically about 60-80 percent of global temperature change on all time scales going back hundreds of millions of years. On the decadal time scale, see the seminal 1991 paper by Christensen and Lassen (“Length of the Solar Cycle: An Indicator of Solar Activity Closely Associated with Climate”) and the 2003 isotope study by Usoskin et al (“Solar activity over the last 1150 yrs: does it correlate with climate?”), which found: “a correlation coefficient of about .7 – .8 at a 94% – 98% confidence level.”

For longer time scales, see the 2003 paper by Shaviv and Veiser (“Celestial driver of Phranerozoic climate?”), which found that found that the cosmic ray flux explains statistically about 75% of global temperature variation over the last 550 million years.

Omitted variable fraud

Solar activity was at “grand maximum” levels from 1940 and 2000 which, given the historical correlation between solar activity and temperature, could easily explain most or all late 20th century warming. When the IPCC and others omit the solar-magnetic variable from their models, any warming effect of solar activity gets misattributed to whatever correlated variables ARE included in their models.

By sheer coincidence, CO2 reached its own “grand maximum” levels (at least compared to the rest of the Holocene) in the second half of the 20th century. Thus in the alarmist models, whatever warming effect the omitted solar-magnetic variable is responsible for gets misattributed to CO2.

You can find rationalizations for this omitted-variable fraud in every IPCC report. For instance, section 6.11.2.2 of the Third Assessment Report does not question the correlation between solar activity and climate, but dismisses the cosmic-ray cloud THEORY as too speculative to include in their climate models:

At present there is insufficient evidence to confirm that cloud cover responds to solar variability.

But they don’t just leave solar-magnetic activity out of their models. Because their forecasts are based entirely on their climate models, they also leave solar magnetic effects completely out of their climate forecasts, despite knowing that there is SOME mechanism (even if the cosmic-ray/cloud theory turns out to be wrong) by which solar-magnetic activity is the primary driver of global temperature.

The only solar variable they do include is solar output or Total Solar Insolation (from long to short-wave radiation), which does not include the solar-magnetic flux. The Fourth Assessment Report does the same thing, looking only at TSI, as do all of the analyses that follow from these reports. For instance, if you look at he “Natural Influences” subsection of the Obama administration’s new report, you will see on page 16 that the only natural influence listed is “solar output’ (or TSI), which is why it is shown graphically to be so tiny.

Solar output is close to constant over the solar cycle (less than 0.1% variation), which is why it is called “the solar constant.” Because TSI is nearly constant, it cannot account for the many thousands of years of close correlation between solar activity and temperature. That must be coming from the one solar variable that DOES vary with solar activity: the solar magnetic flux. Every IPCC climate scientist knows this, yet they still omit the solar-magnetic variable.

Proof of omission: page 16 graphic from the June 2009 report by U.S. Global Change Research Program (in effect, the NOAA). The only natural warming effect listed is total solar output, which does not include the solar-magnetic flux. Similar graphics can be found in each of the IPCC’s assessment reports, where this analysis originates.

Religion, not science

When the alarmists omit solar-magnetic effects on the grounds that they are not satisfied with with existing theories of HOW these effects work, they are not just committing statistical fraud, but they are contradicting the very definition of science. Observation (the overwhelming correlation between solar activity and global temperature) is supposed to trump theory, not vice versa.

Consider an analogy. Until Einstein developed his theory of general relativity there was no good theory of gravity. Newton had a description of the gravitational force (that it diminishes by the inverse of the square of the distance) but nobody had any sensible account for the mechanism by which massive objects were drawn to each other. Applying the standards of the IPCC, a pre-Einsteinian or pre-Newtonian scientist should have forecast that when a stone is released in the air, it would waft away on the breeze. After all, we understand the force that the breeze imparts on the stone, but we don’t understand this thing called gravity, so we should not include it, even though we observe that heavy objects fall.

That is not science, and neither is CO2 alarmism. Data is supposed to trump Theory. By using theory (the proclaimed insufficiency of solar-magnetic theory) as an excuse to ignore the evidence (where solar activity is known to somehow warm the climate), warming alarmism perverts the scientific method.

That makes it religion in the constitutionally barred sense. Not only is this belief system embraced by millions of people WITHOUT EVIDENCE, but it is embraced in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. Alarmism about CO2 is not just a religion, it is a demonstrably irrational religion, equivalent to believing that rocks will waft away on the breeze.

EPA is supposed to make science-based rulings. If you regulate CO2 based on demonstrably anti-scientific ideology, it will be an unconstitutional state establishment of religion.

The current cooling trend fits the solar-magnetic theory, not the CO2 theory

All of the major temperature records show that the earth’s average temperature has been falling for ten years now (with the 21 year smoothed temperature falling for five). In this period, CO2 has continued to increase, while the sun has descended into a prolonged solar minimum. This turn in the sun (breaking the coincidental correlation between solar activity and CO2 that existed for the previous 70 years), is rapidly unmasking the hoax of anthropogenic global warming.

It should not take a rare astrological event to unmask an obvious statistical and scientific fraud. Will the EPA now destroy its reputation by codifying the “green” religion at the very moment when the heavens themselves are exposing its dishonesty? If you choose this course, you will be destroying the nation’s economy and the lives of your countrymen in the service of your own anti-scientific religious beliefs, in violation of your oath of office.

Sincerely,

On the subject of state established religion

This is also the subject of our blogbursts, trying to stop the Flight 93 Memorial Project from stamping a giant Mecca-oriented crescent on the graves our murdered heroes:

A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a mihrab, and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. (Some mihrabs are pointed arch shape, but the archetypical mihrab is crescent shaped.)

The Crescent of Embrace memorial is actually a terrorist memorial mosque, replete with a full complement of typical mosque features, like the minaret-like Tower of Voices that has an Islamic shaped crescent on top and turns out to be a year-round accurate Islamic prayer-time sundial.

Outcry over the apparent Islamic symbolism forced the Park Service to make changes. They promised that they would remove the Islamic symbol shapes, but they never did. They call it a broken circle now, but the circle is broken in the exact same places as before.

The unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is still a giant Islamic-shaped crescent, still pointing to Mecca.

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Sweet Irony

According to MEMRI, Amadmandinnerjacket better watch his back.

Saudi Mufti: Execute Ahmadinejad

Yousef bin Abdallah Al-Ahmad, a mufti from Al-Imam University in Riyadh, said in a fatwa that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be executed, following his June 14 accusation that several of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad were heretics.

Source: Islamlight.net, June 17, 2009

Must be that Shia/Sunni thing that true believers are “just going to have to get over that” (right Condi?)

H/T: Infidels are Cool

 

What will he DO?

Let me tell you something:  if you shoot a weapong toward me with the obvious intention of threatening me, I’m going to react as though you are shooting AT me, and respond appropriately.  What will Teh One™ do if this happens?

North Korea may fire a missile toward Hawaii

By HYUNG-JIN KIM, Associated Press Writer Hyung-jin Kim, Associated Press Writer

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea may fire a long-range ballistic missile toward Hawaii in early July, a Japanese news report said Thursday, as Russia and China urged the regime to return to international disarmament talks on its rogue nuclear program.

The missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2 with a range of up to 4,000 miles (6,500 kilometers), would be launched from North Korea’s Dongchang-ni site on the northwestern coast, said the Yomiuri daily, Japan’s top-selling newspaper. It cited an analysis by the Japanese Defense Ministry and intelligence gathered by U.S. reconnaissance satellites.

The missile launch could come between July 4 and 8, the paper said.

BE AFRAID

Devastating critique of Obama’s disastrous foreign policy failures, at Front Page.

An excerpt:

Consider.

There is an actual genocide taking place in Darfur, but the President is apparently more concerned by the presumed atrocity of “natural growth” in  Israeli settlements that were acknowledged and vetted by the previous American administration and whose legitimacy can be historically validated. This is apparently a much bigger deal than the 500,000 dead (according to National Geographic News for September 14, 2006!) and millions displaced in the Sudanese ethnic cleansing campaign.

North Korea with its now, almost routine, nuclear tests, its proliferation of nuclear and ballistic technology to the world’s rogue regimes and its defiance of the “international community” surely merits a more studied and effective response than expressions of disappointment by the President, a verbal spanking administered by a pitiable Hilary Clinton, and the threat of revocable sanctions. It clearly requires appreciably more attention than does a scattering of huts and outposts in Judea and Samaria that are, in any case, being dismantled by the Israeli government.

But there is one issue that eclipses them all. Iran is racing to the nuclear finish line, determined to become what Middle East Terrorism expert Walid Phares has called a “Jihadist USSR.” It is developing solid fuel missiles capable not only of reaching American military bases in the region but of targeting major European cities. It is perfecting an EMP platform that constitutes a devastating menace to the United States. Disregarding the United Nations Charter, it has promised to annihilate a sovereign nation, with which it is not officially at war, by atomic holocaust. The potential for a planetary cataclysm is enormous and dwarfs by several orders of magnitude any other geopolitical concern in the world today. Yet Obama is intent on preventing Israel from constructing apartment units in East Jerusaelm while doing nothing to prevent Iran from constructing centrifuges in Natanz.

The whole thing is more than worth your time.

Flight 93 Blogburst: Same Old Tricks from AP

False AP report: Obama did NOT say that Iran must respect voters’ choiceObama’s comments were mushy, yes, but at least he said the most important thing, according to AP:

He said it’s up to Iran to determine its own leaders but that the country must respect voters’ choice.

Why then have reputable people continued to pass harsh judgment? And why would AP paraphrase what would have been Obama’s key statement?

Turns out Obama said no such thing. What he actually said is that the VOICES of the Iranian people should be heard and respected, not their votes:

And particularly to the youth of Iran, I want them to know that we in the United States do not want to make any decisions for the Iranians, but we do believe that the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected.

This is consistent with the rest of Obama’s remarks. He never said a word about respecting votes. Obama did mention “the democratic process,” but far from saying anything about this process having to meet any standards of integrity, he instead implied strongly that he will accept whatever result the “process” followed by the Mullahs produces:

I want to start off by being very clear that it is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be; that we respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran, which sometimes the United States can be a handy political football…

Democracy means that Iranian sovereignty lies with the Iranian people and that a regime that rigs an election is NOT sovereign. Yet Obama is explicit that he will continue to treat the mullahs as the Iranian sovereign no matter how they judge the election. He even goes so far as to suggest that the only reason he is bothering to comment on the competing claim to sovereignty at all is because it would be unseemly for him not to:

We will continue to pursue a tough, direct dialogue between our two countries, and we’ll see where it takes us. But even as we do so, I think it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we’ve seen on the television over the last few days.

The only operative concerns that he mentions are for: “free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent.” When he talks about the “democratic process” going forward, all he urges is that the process be peaceful and that dissent be allowed. He says nothing about the process being honest:

…there appears to be a sense on the part of people who were so hopeful and so engaged and so committed to democracy who now feel betrayed. And I think it’s important that, moving forward, whatever investigations take place are done in a way that is not resulting in bloodshed and is not resulting in people being stifled in expressing their views.

It is no accident that Obama ended with the statement that AP paraphrased so egregiously (equating his call for bloodless suppression with a demand for legitimate elections). This was his theme throughout. He views the honesty of Iran’s democratic process as something to be judged by the mullahs, who he clearly accepts to be the sovereign power, regardless of the merits of competing claims.

AP covers its tracks, just like they did with the Flight 93 memorial

AP’s fraudulent report about Obama demanding respect for voters’ choice was the primary print report on Obama’s comments. Now that it has already misled millions of people, AP has covered its tracks by filing an update that overwrites the errant statement. This is what AP does when it gets caught putting out misinformation. To avoid issuing a correction, they flush the misleading story down the memory hole by using the same url for a completely different story. (Google only finds AP’s original article still posted at Fox News.)

AP did the same thing last year after it was taken to task for failing to check the most basic facts in a story about the controversy over possible Islamic symbolism in the Flight 93 memorial. Ramesh Santanam reported a number of conflicting factual assertions, like the 44 blocks:

Opponents also claim there is a plan to have 44 glass blocks, for the 40 victims and four hijackers, in the design.

“That’s an absolute, unequivocal fabrication that is being portrayed as fact,” said Edward Felt’s brother, Gordon Felt, president of Families of Flight 93. “It’s misleading and helps drive the conspiracy theory.”

When it was pointed out that Santanam could have found the four extra blocks just by opening up the design drawings and counting, AP quickly filed a completely different story (about fundraising for the memorial), under the same url.

It’s not that there is anything inherently wrong with AP using subject feeds that automatically update with their latest offering. It is that AP is systematically using this system to dodge corrections. This is actually their official policy:

For corrections on live, online stories, we overwrite the previous version. We send separate corrective stories online as warranted.

Except AP virtually never issue corrective stories, for the simple reason that AP has no established correction procedure. They just do the overwrite thing and say “too bad.”

Well this time the overwrite thing is not good enough.

Demand a corrective story about AP’s false paraphrase of Obama’s words

Associated Press obviously understands the importance of Obama saying that Iran must respect voters’ choice or they wouldn’t have bothered to pretend that he said it when he didn’t. They don’t just fail to mention Obama’s glaring omission on this crucial point, but actually tell the public via false paraphrase that he did say what he glaringly omitted. This cannot stand. Faced with our new president’s key statement on a historic crisis, AP reports a photo negative of what Obama actually said.

There may be no established procedure for AP corrections, but anyone can still send a pre-written email to AP CEO Tom Curley, Chairman Burl Osborne, Editor Kathleen Carroll, the reporters who worked on the story (the egregious Jennifer Loven, along with Anne Gearan and Robert Burns), plus a smattering of other AP editors and bureaucrats. Who knows. There may even be a limit to how disingenuous some of these people are willing to be.

To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.

Oh Goody!

We’re already trying to stave off global nuclear obliteration at the hands of the dangerous and unstable leaders of NoKo and Iran…but at least they have fairly strong security infrastructure (well, perhaps not Iran right now). 

Who thinks THIS is a good idea?

Iraq Nuclear Power for Peaceful Purposes

Iraqi Minister of Science and Technology Ra’id Fahmi has announced that his country is seeking to build a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes.

The reactor will be used to generate electricity in lieu of oil.  [uh-huh]

Our fearless feckless “leadership” has expressed grave concerns about “militants” of the Taliban getting  nuclear material from Pakistan…what about the AQI remnants in Iraq?

It just gets better all the time, doesn’t it?

Is This It?

The Dear NORK-Dork, our favorite nuclear-armed Nutjob, recently declared:

“Our nuclear deterrent will be … a merciless offensive means to deal a just retaliatory strike to those who touch the country’s dignity and sovereignty even a bit…”

Do you think he meant something like this?

U.N. Security Council imposes new sanctions on North Korea

For some mood-lightening perspective, please ponder the commentary here.

Is it too early to start drinking?  Cue the R.E.M!

Declaration of Independence From the “Sort of God”

Now that I have a few minutes here and there, I was finally able to catch up – ok, not really catch up, but at least check out – some of my favorite sites.  I found this excellent piece at Infidel Bloggers Alliance, and had to share.

Dear Former Senator Obama

America has been at this brink before. How long your fellow citizens endure the abandonment of American Tradition, Values and Law remains to be seen. What their reaction will be is also unknown.

The men who drafted and signed this document, and the equally brave women who stood behind and beside them, were guilty of Sedition and Treason of the highest order. Yet today we call them Patriots. Founding Fathers.

So is it Sedition or Treason today to ask, to DEMAND, that you either abide by this document, and it’s Sister The Constitution, or resign your current position?

If our own leaders will not abide by these, why should any of us? Why should any of us be bound to those same leaders?

“A Patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.” — Ed Abbey

(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)

The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America

OK…that’s my cutoff point.  Go read the rest – you won’t be sorry.