When 'dissent' was the left's issue

• Remember the popular bumper sticker:

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." Now that Democrats control the White House and Congress,

• the left treats dissent as the lowest form of treason. When the left agitates over government policies, it's considered righteous anger. When the right - and much of the center - agitate, it's painted as the rantings of the criminally and violently insane."...3/31
  

Fine. This won't change, so we'll just proceed. ed. via Lucianne.com

Chicago Climate Exchange ejected from HSBC Climate Index for low value

"The banking giant HSBC removed two companies involved in carbon trading from its Climate Change Index on Monday because they had lost too much value....

• “Carbon trading was the major loser from Copenhagen,” HSBC analysts said in their March 21010 Quarterly Index Review. “Cap and trade needs hard targets and binding rules – and Copenhagen delivered neither,” HSBC said.

The two companies ejected were Climate Exchange and Trading Emissions. Both companies are based in the Isle of Man and listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Climate Exchange owns the

• European Climate Exchange,
• the Chicago Climate Exchange and the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange.

The chairman of Trading Emissions, Neil Eckert, is also the chief executive of Climate Exchange....

• The revised rating by HSBC is another example of how expectations for carbon trading, also known as “cap-and-trade,” have diminished over the past year--...

HSBC said those disappointments were reflected in the value of the companies reliant on carbon trading; the companies HSBC removed from the index had

• failed to reach the minimum market capitalization of $400 million."...

"HSBC ejects carbon traders from index," by James Kanter , 3/29/10, NY Times, Green Inc., via Tom Nelson (party hat added by editor of this blog)

Getaway day news--US economy revised downward

BBC: "US economic growth has been revised down to an annualised rate of 5.6% for the fourth quarter of 2009, official figures show.This is the rate of economic growth for the three months that assumes the same level for a full 12 months. It was revised down from 5.9%, in the US Commerce Department's third estimate of fourth-quarter GDP.

• The main factors behind the revision were weaker personal and government consumption, and lower investment."...3/26

North Korea strikes South Korea ship with torpedo

• Update, 3/28: BBC: "South Korean ship 'split in half'"

Koror, Palau, March 26 (CNA) "President Ma Ying-jeou decided late Friday to activate the country's national security mechanism after

• North Korea reportedly sank a South Korean naval ship hours earlier.

• Ma, on a tour of Taiwan's six allies in the South Pacific, also directed Ministry of National Defense Kao Hua-chu by phone to monitor relevant developments and adopt necessary response measures....

According to South Korea's SBS TV Station, a South Korean naval ship with 104 officers on board was hit by a North Korean torpedo and sank off the country's West Coast, with only 59 people rescued.

• South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has called an emergency meeting to address the issue, the report said." ****

from Focus Taiwan News Channel, "President Ma activates security mechanism over Korea incident" 3/27/10

• Most reports are simply saying the South Korean ship "sank." John Batchelor spoke to several reporters and received other reports on this own on this matter for his show tonight. All say the ship sustained a torpedo blow in the stern section, that the nature of the hit could not be anything but a torpedo.
  
• All agreed it was an act of war. Also, the US has instructed the South Korean government not to acknowledge any aggression. Obama has also told the media to just say the ship sank. I don't have links at the moment, but they will probably emerge soon. ed.
  

Kind and tolerant 'green' group mocks Supreme Court

The Supreme Court 5-4 decision expanding campaign funding and free speech --which Soros and McCain thought were their private domain- enrages a cap and trade group. This from the site of so-called League of Conservation Voters, a benevolent, loving 'green' group.
meetings, according to Al Gore's blog, 3/25: "“Green group officials exiting the meeting Thursday declined to discuss specifics about the session.”

“We had a very encouraging meeting, and we are looking forward to continuing to work together to pass a comprehensive bill this year,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, after the meeting broke up.”

Why don't these people just accept that they 'lost an election?'

sf chronicle 2007

sf chronicle 2007

joshuapundit 2007

joshuapundit 2007


joshuapundit 2007

2006 indymedia

Al Sharpton used to say people should never quit fighting for what's right. Yesterday he said people should not complain, just realize there was an election and they lost.

Another Obama Friday Night's Greatest Hits--we gave Gitmo terrorists use of laptops

• News released on getaway day- With teams of lawyers working around the clock
  

to make life as difficult as possible for US survivors of Islamic terrorism, anything is possible.

• Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and at least 4 other terrorists were given US taxpayer funded laptops in their cells for at least 15 months, September 2008 until at least January of this year for use in preparing for their defense.
  

"The Pentagon allowed five captured al Qaeda members currently held at the Guantanamo Bay prison to use laptop computers in detention, raising concerns among security officials that the terrorism suspects could pass sensitive data to terrorists in the future, according to U.S. officials.

• The computers, without Internet access, were provided to Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other suspected 9/11 conspirators at the prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba
  
• after approval by senior Pentagon officials in September 2008.

The battery-powered laptops were kept in the detainees' cell areas, and limitations on their use were imposed, defense officials said. The practice continued until January, when charges against the five were temporarily dropped after Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the men would be tried in civilian court, not by military commission.

• Mr. Holder then backed off plans to hold trials in federal court in New York City and said this week that a decision on where to conduct the trials is expected in the coming weeks.

In addition to Mohammed, the other al Qaeda members who were given computers were Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi. The computer access was granted by Guantanamo authorities before an Oct. 6, 2008, ruling by Marine Corps Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann, a military judge, that formally granted the five terrorism suspects the right to use computers, said Col. Les Melnyk, a Pentagon spokesman....

• "The detainees' access to laptops and their interaction with lawyers is one element of an ongoing CIA and Justice Department investigation into
  
• whether lawyers representing the detainees compromised the safety of covert CIA interrogators. Lawyers
  
• showed the prisoners privately obtained photographs of CIA interrogators in an attempt to have the terrorism suspects
  
• identify the interrogators in order to call them as witnesses in future trials.

The agent-identification effort is part of a joint program of the

• American Civil Liberties Union and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
  

called the John Adams Project."...

• from Washington Times article by Bill Gertz, "Gitmo suspects allowed laptops," 3/10/10, via mention on John Batchelor show
  

Another Obama news story filed on getaway day

"On Friday,

• the Obama administration filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit,

• supporting the use of racial preferences by the University of Texas in its undergraduate

• admissions. The brief is a full-throated endorsement of such discrimination, and it

goes out of its way to say that the administration will support it at the K-12 level, too, as well as

• throughout university admissions."...

• In the city of New York, the white race is a minority. Does that mean

Obama would demand whites receive special preference in K-12 and universities? Has he filed a federal brief to that effect? ed.

• Report from National Review via Mark Levin

Mass. treasurer- Obama Health bill will bankrupt US in 4 years

• Mass. Treasurer Tim Cahill, former democrat, now independent:

""If President Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistakes of the health insurance mandate on a national level, they

• will bankrupt this country within four years,” Cahill said.

“It is time for the President and the Democratic leadership to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new plan that does not threaten to wipe out the American economy.”

• Cahill’s call for a new plan resembled the statement made during US Sen. Scott Brown’s insurgent campaign."...

Boston Herald, 3/16/10, Jessica Van Sack

• Soros and other billionaires such as David Rockefeller have been very clear that their goal is to break the United States. We are likely broke already. ed. via Drudge Report.
  

When major media completely block vetting of a presidential candidate

Independent citizens protesting the massive tax increase currently being sold
as a health care bill. Today in DC, from Fox via Gateway Pundit

NY Times custom designs Christ-like image of Obama, risks Muslim outrage at insensitivity

• 
  
• 

• The Sunday NY Times runs this picture deifying Obama along with an article. They credit both a photographer and an illustrator. via Gateway Pundit

With thanks again to the farce that is the republican party, the so-called health care bill can't possibly improve health but is predicted to increase taxes triple the amount by which Clinton raised them (this I heard on NPR today, 3/16, I'm not sure who was speaking but I believe it was Larry Summers) Handy tools are a so-called health care/student loan pork bill with references to the words "green" and "advisory group." Health care and education are not the goals when overseeing the decline of a country--just the opposite. You want endless committees and groups who produce nothing, inhibit competition, and add union jobs:

• "(A) making recommendations on Federal policies to increase the number of green, high- performing schools;

• (B) identifying Federal policies that are barriers to helping States and local educational agencies make green, high-performing schools;

• "(c) CONSULTATION.—In carrying out its duties under subsection (b), the Advisory Council shall consult with the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality and the heads of appropriate Federal agencies, including the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Labor, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Administrator of the General Services Administration (through the Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings)." from the Health/Student bill submitted tonight via Michelle Malkin via Red State

To the extent the republican party exists at all, it does nothing but help the left. With a few exceptions, it is a repellent bunch of camera hogs in my opinion.

Obama media enabled Prius horror ride hoax because they wanted it to be true

• 
  
• The hoaxster's claims have been found to be false and physically impossible. The media never checked his claims out, avoided use of words like "alleged." Then there's the hoaxster's bankruptcy...They
  wanted the story to be true and were determined not to investigate it.
  

Forbes.com: "So why did he (Sikes the Prius driver) do it? Sleuth work at the Web sites Jalopnik.com and Gawker.com reveals that Sikes and his wife Patty in 2008 filed for bankruptcy and are over $700,000 in debt.

• Among their creditors is Toyota Financial Services

• for a lease on a 2008 Toyota Prius, with value at time of bankruptcy of $20,494.

The Jalopnik Web site shows a copy of Toyota's secured claims form, though when Jalopnik questioned Sikes by e-mail

• he denied being behind on his Prius payments.

Sikes also has a history of filing insurance claims for allegedly stolen items that are slowly coming to light.

• In 2001 he filed a police report with the Merced County Sheriff's Department for $58,000 in stolen property, including jewelry, a prosumer mini-DV camera and gear, and $24,000 in cash, according to Fox40 in Sacramento.
  

His bankruptcy documents show a 2008 payment of $7,400 for an allegedly stolen saxophone and clothes.

• For what it's worth, Sikes owned and operated a Web site called AdultSwingLife.com. More salacious material on this man will continue to pour in.

But the press conference alone makes it clear Sikes' story didn't wash.

• Journalism schools are supposed to teach that skepticism is paramount.
  

"If your mother says it, check it out," goes the old adage. Yet comments on Web sites across the country reveal that practically everyone thought the Prius incident was a hoax--though they couldn't prove it

• --except for the media.

They have been as determined to not investigate Sikes' claims

• as Sikes was to not stop his car.
  

It's a Toyota media feeding frenzy and the media aren't about to let little things like incredible stories and

• readily-refutable claims get in the way."

"Michael Fumento is director of the nonprofit Independent Journalism Project where he specialized in science issues"

• "Toyota Hybrid Horror Hoax," 3/12/10 Forbes.com

via Mark Levin Show

Entrepreneurship strangled in America while lavished on Islamic states by Obama

• "The White House on Friday announced a "summit on entrepreneurship" to

build economic ties with the Islamic world, part of President Barack Obama's outreach to Muslims.

• The White House said it has invited participants from more than 40 countries over five continents for the April 26-27 conference in Washington.

• (Above photo of Nick Berg decapitated in 2004 by Islamists)

"The summit will highlight the role entrepreneurship can play in addressing common challenges while building partnerships that will lead to greater opportunity abroad and at home," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

• Obama first spoke of the entrepreneurship conference in his signature June 4 speech in Cairo to the Islamic world. ...

Obama promised at the time that he would convene a "presidential summit on entrepreneurship" by the end of 2009.

• He said that the meeting would "identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the United States and
  
• Muslim communities around the world.""

• (Photo of Nick Berg in 2004 being decapitated by Islamists)

AFP report, "Obama calls 'entrepreneurship summit' with Muslims," via Breitbart 3/5/10 and Gateway Pundit

• photos from Sweetness and Light via Michael Savage

US attorneys may still working for accused terrorists-Obama refuses to confirm or deny

• American employees at the White House refuse to reveal whether US legal staff is still defending terrorist detainees.
  
• Upset that the White House was forced to reveal names of some employees who have defended terrorists, Obama's Attorney General said: "..."hiring former terrorist lawyers is just like hiring lawyers who used to defend white collar criminals.""...

Names have been sought for several months by a member of congress. Resumes of all our employees should of course be readily available. At this point some of the names currently sought are revealed to have been lawyers for terrorists.

• "Today, FOX News revealed the identities of these
  
• seven DOJ attorneys who represented

terrorists before joining the Holder Justice Department.

• Jonathan Cedarbaum- now an official with the Office of Legal Counsel
• Eric Columbus- Senior counsel in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General
• Karl Thompson- Office of Legal Counsel
• Joseph Guerra- Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General at the Justice Department
• Tali Farhadian- now an official in the Office of the Attorney General
• Beth Brinkmann- now Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Civil Division
• Tony West- the Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Division...

…The most extensive detainee-related work by a current Justice Department official, though, may have been done by Tony West, the Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Division.

• For several years, while working in Morrison & Foerster’s San Francisco office, West represented “American Taliban” Johh Walker Lindh, a move that was hotly debated after West was nominated to the Justice Department in January 2009. West wasn’t confirmed until April 2009.

In a recent letter to (Senator) Grassley, Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich said nine Justice Department lawyers in total previously represented terror suspects, contributed to court briefs in detainee-related cases or otherwise helped advocate for detainees.

• Weich acknowledged in the letter that Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal previously represented a Guantanamo Bay detainee and that National Security Division Attorney Jennifer Daskal previously worked for Human Rights Watch, which advocates on behalf of detainees.

Weich declined to identify the other lawyers"...

• (It is certainly possible the Bush administration employed attorneys with dangerous backgrounds. Bush is of course no longer in office.) ed.

"Keep America Safe released this statement following the disclosure of the terrorist attorneys:

“Today, after much public outcry, the Department of Justice finally and reluctantly disclosed the names of the Al Qaeda Seven.

• We regret that they still refuse to tell the American people whether any of these lawyers are currently working on detainee issues inside the Department.
  

The American people have a right to know whether lawyers who voluntarily flocked to Guantanamo to take up the cause of the terrorists are currently working on detainee issues in President Obama’s Justice Department.

• Attorney General Holder’s assertion that hiring former terrorist lawyers is just like hiring lawyers who used to defend white collar criminals demonstrates once again that, despite the President’s rhetoric, the Obama Administration does not understand the dangers of
  

treating terrorism like a law enforcement matter.”"

all above via Gateway Pundit "Holder's "Al Qaeda 7" Attorneys Revealed"

GOP tv sit-com made Obama King of Parliament

"President Obama does not embody the will of the people; Congress does."

• The TV stars in the GOP seem to serve a monarchy. With the exception of
• Jim Bunning who has mind and character to realize American government fought to get rid of such a system.

"Many members of the GOP missed the bigger significance of last week's Obama health care summit. In a manner unique in American history,

• a president claimed the authority to chair Congress, dictating items of legislation and belittling the democratic opposition.

• America separated from that system over two hundred years ago as tea plunged into Boston harbor. That's not the way things are done in America.

• President Obama must be restrained, or the beleaguered Constitution will be reduced to mere tissue paper.

President Obama exceeds his constitutional authority on a near-weekly basis. Just two weeks ago, President Obama made the chilling declaration that if Congress refuses to act, he will simply rule by executive decree. With Rahm Emanuel at the helm, this sort of unconstitutional sentiment should come as no surprise, but it certainly should not be tolerated.

• President Obama does not embody the will of the people; Congress does.

President Obama is given no authority under Article II of the U.S. Constitution to participate in legislation -- only the power to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." The President holds the power to sign or to veto, and there ends his capacity for legislative input.

The practice of executive fiat, called the "unitary executive" during the Bush years, has grown progressively since FDR, heating up during the Clinton administration.

In INS v. Chadha, the SCOTUS ruled that presidents of the United States may bypass Congress. This ruling necessarily ignores the clear and transparent language of Article I of the U.S. Constitution, which declares that "[a]ll legislative power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress." This phrasing doesn't rule out the possibility of delegation, but the provision in question leaves no room for the executive branch as co-legislator. Even so, presidents over the last ten to fifteen years have relied heavily on INS v. Chahda to justify a greater role for the presidency in making public policy, blurring the separation of powers, and in many cases, endangering constitutional liberties.

• In this line of thought, President Reagan's Attorney General Edwin Meese argued that signing statements or executive orders "provide an opportunity for the chief executive to participate more actively in the creation of legislation than the mere decision to sign or veto bills transmitted to Congress"[i]. President Reagan would issue 250 signing statements, 86 of which raised constitutional or legal objections.

President Clinton expanded the use of executive orders and signing statements to affect public policy to an even greater degree than the "conservative" Reagan administration, much to the detriment of the constitutional fabric by which we are governed and the sovereignty of the United States at large. Under the misnomer "Project Podesta" -- a more fitting name would have been "Project Lenin" -- the Clinton team overtly skirted constitutional restrictions on executive power and commenced making laws, confiscating land, banning guns, etc., all with these questionable devices.

• During his administration, President Clinton issued 381 signing statements, 70 of which raised legal objections. Clinton's then-Assistant Attorney General Walter Dellinger would comment that "there are circumstances in which the President may appropriately decline to enforce a statute that he views as unconstitutional"[ii]. The Constitution allows only two possibilities: veto or enactment. The Clinton middle way is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution.

This huge assumption of power comes right out of the Marxist-Leninist playbook that views the leader as the embodiment of popular will. This paradigm was closely replicated in the remarks of Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart:

We have a congressional majority right now that seems intent on thwarting the will of the majority in this country on gun safety, on tobacco, and therefore, the President will use the authority invested in him by the Constitution and the laws of this country to seek alternative solutions.

Use of these "alternative solutions" appears to cross party lines. According to the Congressional Research Service, President George W. Bush issued 152 signing statements, an innocuous-sounding figure, except that of this number, 118 carried some sort of statutory or constitutional objection, as well as over 1,000 objections to distinct provisions of a law. Bush exercised what amounts to a de facto line-item veto, accepting parts of legislation, rejecting other parts entirely, and substituting his "interpretation" -- what really amounts to a consciously altered meaning -- for the original words of the legislation.

• Rahm Emanuel has attempted to do for President Obama what he did for President Clinton. News has surfaced that due to Congressional paralysis, Emanuel will spearhead a program of executive action to address a host of policy questions to which President Obama has been unable to gain Congressional assent. Executive orders will reportedly be used to implement cap-and-trade legislation held up in the Senate, to enact health care reform, and to address other questions, such as the longstanding ban on gays serving openly in the military.

During his State of the Union address, President Obama brazenly declared that he would set up his own budgetary commission despite the refusal of Congress to approve such a venture. Even before Obama's formal announcement of rule by executive fiat, he began nullifying centuries of statute governing the domestic deployment of U.S. troops via executive order, vesting a new, president-appointed council with the authority to declare martial law. Against such brashness, the constitutional separation of powers cannot endure. The self-proclaimed authority of the president might be beneficial in one context and dangerous in another, which is why the accumulation of any powers not specified in the Constitution must be forbidden in all contexts. James Madison, author of much of the Constitution, would agree:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

At the heart of President Obama's approach is an assumption that the success of his policy agenda is the primary responsibility of his office. He is therefore willing to break the law to make his policies a reality, but the framers recognized no such right -- only the responsibility to protect and defend the Constitution. Everything else is tangential.

The only legitimate purpose of government recognized by the framers is adequately expressed in this passage from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Policy is not the object of American government, though sometimes public policy will be consistent with the enumerated responsibilities of one or more branches of government. Once upon a time, it was common for the king or queen of the United Kingdom to sit in parliament and actively prescribe the legislative agenda. Now, the Queen sits in parliament once every year and reads a preapproved script of legislative goals. This system did not suit the United States.
America voted with the musket for a servant, not a king. Maybe it's time President Obama is reminded of his place."

American Thinker 3/2/10 by John Griffing, "King and Parliament, American Style"