Portland Oregonian, oozing compassion or something, wins gold for twisted Olympics angle

VANCOUVER, B.C. -- The protestors gathered Saturday on Granville Street in front of the giant windows of the Official Olympic Superstore that is Hudson's Bay Co. department store.

They glared at the mannequins outfitted with $40 stocking caps and $650 Official Vancouver 2010 Olympics sweatsuits, and they hissed about homelessness, global warming and the increasingly corporate feel of this event.

One guy shouted, "Homes before Games!" Another chided the tourists standing behind the ropes, a line a block long, waiting to get into the store. Another walked up and hurled a can of red paint against the Olympic rings stenciled on the glass.

I felt like joining right in.

Not over homelessness, though it's a great cause. Not over the corporate feel of the Olympics, which is a worthwhile question. But rather, over the reaction of the International Luge Federation and Vancouver Olympics officials when it comes to the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili, from the nation of Georgia.

The Vancouver Olympics feels like one giant beef today.

We're hurtling down the road to serfdom

According to the Tax Foundation, 60 percent of the population now gets more in government benefits than it pays in taxes. What does it say about a society in which more than half the people live at the expense of the rest? Worse, the dependent class is growing. The 60 percent will soon be 70 percent.

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin seems to understand the threat: He's worried that "more people have a stake in the welfare state than in free enterprise. This is a road that Hayek perfectly described as 'the road to serfdom.'" (Tomorrow I will ask Ryan why, if he understands this, he voted for TARP and the auto bailouts.)

Kurt Vonnegut understood the threat of government-imposed equality. His short story Harrison Bergeron portrays a future in which no one is permitted to have any physical or intellectual advantage over anyone else. A government Handicapper General weighs down the strong and agile, masks the faces of the beautiful and distracts the smart.

So far, the Handicapper General is just fantasy. But Vice President Joe Biden did shout at the Democratic National Convention: "Everyone is your equal, and everyone is equal to you." If he meant that we're all equal in rights and before the law, fine. If he meant government shouldn't put barriers in the way of opportunity, great. But statists like Biden usually have more in mind: They want government to make results more equal.

The Geert Wilders trial provokes a Dutch equivalent of the Tea Party over Islamic inroads

Leftist prof who killed 3 after being denied tenure in Alabama may have killed brother in 1986

A Massachusetts police chief is now saying that UAH shooting suspect Amy Bishop shot and killed her brother during an argument, and the case may have been mishandled by the police department more than two decades ago when the fatal shooting occurred.

The Boston Globe reported that Amy Bishop, a biology professor at UAH who is accused of shooting and killing three colleagues yesterday, accidentally shot her 18-year-old brother, Seth M. Bishop, in the abdomen with a 12-gauge shotgun in December 1986.

The report said Bishop was asking her mother, Judith, how to properly unload the gun when it when off and shot Seth.

Braintree Police Chief Paul Frazier is now offering a different account of the shooting to The Globe: "Bishop had shot her brother during an argument and was being booked by police when the police chief at the time ordered the booking process stopped and Bishop released to her mother," the paper reports on its Web site. Records from the case have been missing since 1987.

"I don't want to use the word 'coverup,' but this does not look good," Frazier said.

A once-radical professor recalls an encounter with a radical young revolutionary Barack Obama

Huntsville shooter described as committed leftist

Amy Bishop, the professor that killed three of University of Alabama-Huntsville biology faculty members and wounded three others after being denied tenure, had very mixed reviews on her teaching abilities, according to the Web site ratemyprofessor.com.

While no students doubted her knowledge of the subject matter, a significant number of them accused Bishop of being an incompetent educator, unable to relate the subject matter to her students in a way that they could understand.

In addition, several made references to political comments Bishop made, including one who said "she is a socalist but she only talks about it after class." Another student wrote that Bishop, " She's a liberal from 'Hahvahd' and let's you know exactly how she feels about particular subjects."

Robot Andrew Sullivan & Sarah Palin derangement syndrome

As with an orgasm, the thrill of the laser intercept may be much too brief

Buchanan: "...the state they are coming to detest is at war with the country that they still love"

What called the Tea Party into existence?

Some are angry over unchecked immigration and the failure to control our borders and send the illegals back. Some are angry over the loss of manufacturing jobs. Some are angry over winless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some are angry over ethnic preferences they see as favoring minorities over them.

What they agree upon, however, is that they have been treading water for a decade, working harder and harder with little or no improvement in their family standard of living. They see the government as taking more of their income in taxes, seeking more control over their institutions, creating entitlements for others not them, plunging the nation into unpayable debt, inviting inflation or a default that can wipe out what they have saved.

And there is nothing they can do about it, for they are politically powerless. By their gatherings, numbers, mockery of elites and militancy, however, they get a sense of the power that they do not have.

Their repeated reappearance on the national stage, in new incarnations, should be a fire bell in the night to the establishment of both parties. For it testifies to their belief and that of millions more that the state they are coming to detest is at war with the country that they still love.

ACORN could get billions from government to finance thuggery and fraud in 2012 election

ACORN and other left-wing advocacy groups could be eligible for up to $3.99 billion in federal funding included in the $3.83 trillion fiscal 2011 budget blueprint that President Obama unveiled yesterday.

The $3.99 billion comes from a congressional slush fund known as the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, which is part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) $48.5 billion fiscal 2011 budget. CDBG grants, which are awarded to states and localities, pass indirectly to ACORN.

How is more funding of ACORN possible when Congress passed a ban on funding the group and its affiliates just last year?

Congress has already hinted it might vote to restore funding to ACORN. On Dec. 8 the House Appropriations Committee rejected on a party line vote of 9 to 5 an amendment offered by Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa) that would have blocked federal funding of ACORN.

And in December federal Judge Nina Gershon restored federal funding of ACORN by issuing a temporary injunction against the congressional funding ban. The Brooklyn-based Gershon, a Bill Clinton appointee, determined that depriving ACORN of taxpayer dollars was an unconstitutional "bill of attainder" that singled out ACORN for punishment without trial.

Here is a first-rate summation of the problem: Rep. Paul Ryan appears to have the answer

Given the predictable retirement of baby boomers, it was no secret that promised government benefits would overwhelm the existing tax base. This problem could have been fixed.

It hasn't because our political culture is so wedded to public opinion that it can't (or won't) govern. To govern is to choose, and our leaders recoil from unpopular choices. Americans want generous benefits and low taxes, so that's what the system -- led by either Democrats or Republicans -- provides.

President Obama continues this tradition. His administration's long-term budget projections show skyrocketing debt. In 2008, federal debt held by the public equaled 40 percent of the economy (gross domestic product). The administration has it rising to 77 percent of GDP in 2020, 99 percent in 2030 and 218 percent in 2050.

In reality, not choosing is a choice: to govern by crisis. Someday, the debt and associated interest payments (projected at $840 billion in 2020, a seventh of federal spending) may trigger a financial backlash. Lenders won't lend or will demand much higher rates. Congress would then be forced to cut benefits or raise taxes. The unstated hope is that the crisis occurs on someone else's watch.

Ryan rejects this consensus. He would make choices now.

Conflicted: Pensions of some British journalists rested on investments in green technology

STRIKING parallels between the BBC’s coverage of the global warming debate and the activities of its pension fund can be revealed today.

The corporation is under investigation after being inundated with complaints that its editorial coverage of climate change is biased in favour of those who say it is a man-made phenomenon.

The £8billion pension fund is likely to come under close scrutiny over its commitment to promote a low-carbon economy while struggling to reverse an estimated £2billion deficit.

Concerns are growing that BBC journalists and their bosses regard disputed scientific theory that climate change is caused by mankind as “mainstream” while huge sums of employees’ money is invested in companies whose success depends on the theory being widely accepted.

The fund, which has 58,744 members, accounts for about £8 of the £142.50 licence fee and the proportion looks likely to rise while programme budgets may have to be cut to help reduce the deficit.

The BBC is the only media organisation in Britain whose pension fund is a member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which has more than 50 members across Europe.

Its chairman is Peter Dunscombe, also the BBC’s Head of Pensions Investment.

Prominent among its recent campaigns was a call for a “strong and binding” global agreement on climate change – one that fell on deaf ears after the UN climate summit in Copenhagen failed to reach agreement on emissions targets and a cut in greenhouse gases.

In 2012 test, Obama can't beat no name GOPer

President Barack Obama only leads a generic Republican candidate by 2 percentage points in a potential 2012 match up, according to a new Gallup Poll out Thursday that also shows a continued drift of independents from Democrats.

Obama leads 44 percent to 42 percent, a statistical dead heat, against a nameless Republican, according to the survey of 1,025 adults nationwide.

Not surprisingly, the poll shows that Democrats strongly believe the president should be reelected, while Republicans would like to see one of their own in the White House.

But among independent voters, 45 percent would back a Republican and only 31 percent would favor the president. Twenty-four percent of independents are not sure if they would vote for Obama or a Republican candidate.

Virginia blocks compulsory health insurance

Virginia is moving towards passing legislation that would make it unlawful to implement federal legislation to compel Virginia residents to buy health insurance, a/k/a, Obamacare. On Monday, February 1st, the Democratic-controlled state senate of Virginia passed a bill that would block the implementation of the individual mandate of Obamacare.

Some have argued that, constitutionally, federal legislation compelling Virginians to buy health insurance is no different than any other economic regulation imposed by Congress. That kind of “that’s the way we’ve always done it” thinking is not only incorrect constitutionally, but may help explain why reckless spending at the federal level has pushed America to the verge of bankruptcy.

It reminds me of an exchange between a reporter and one of the several Democratic committee chairmen in the House that are addressing the health care bill: The reporter asked the chairman “where in the Constitution does it say the federal government can mandate citizens to buy health insurance?”

The chairman snapped back: “Where does it say we can’t?!”

Two years before Fort Hood shootings Army brass knew troops were vulnerable to jihadists

Investigative reporter Bill Gertz has revealed: “Almost two years before the deadly Fort Hood shooting by a radicalized Muslim officer, the U.S. Army was explicitly warned that jihadism — Islamic holy war — was a serious problem and threat to personnel in the U.S., according to participants at a major Army-sponsored conference.”

Over 350 Army officials involved in counterterror efforts attended this February 2008 conference. One of the speakers, Lt. Colonel Joseph Myers, explains the topic of his lecture: “I noted that because of our lack of understanding of Islamic doctrines, Islamic Jihad and my view that our counterintelligence function is broken, outdated and being usurped in some cases by public affairs and equal opportunity officials, we were going to get soldiers killed in America, on our own bases for that professional ignorance.”

And that’s just what happened at Fort Hood.

What makes this so profoundly disturbing is that it shows that senior level officials knew. They were explicitly warned that jihadism — Islamic holy war — was a serious problem and a threat to military personnel and civilians alike. And still they did nothing. Not only did they do nothing, but they left known jihadis like Nidal Hasan, who murdered thirteen Americans at Fort Hood in his jihad attack of November 2009, in place and unsupervised.

They knew. And still they sacrificed Americans.

Norwegians in scuba gear chasing Google Street View crew

GOP leads in generic poll; only 36% would vote to reelect their own member of Congress

For the first time since '02, GOPers lead the Washington Post's generic congressional ballot, giving Dems reason to worry about their electoral prospects this Fall.

48% of registered voters picked the GOP candidate when asked who they would cast a ballot for this year, while 45% said they would choose a Dem. That's the first time a GOP candidate has led among likely or registered voters since Oct. 27, '02, when the GOP sported a 49%-47% lead among likely voters.

Two years ago, just days before the '08 elections when Dems picked up 21 GOP-held seats, Dems led the generic ballot by 10 points among registered voters and by 6 points among likely voters. Voters still trust Dems to do a better job solving problems the country faces, by a 43%-37% margin, but that's well below even the margin by which the public backed Dems in Nov. '09, when they picked Dems by a 47%-31% margin.

A paltry 36% of voters said they would vote to re-elect their own members of Congress, while 56% said they would "look around" for someone new.

Obama softens his harsh stance toward business; Krugman responds, "We're doomed"

Bloomberg News:

President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay.

The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.”

“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.”

Obama sought to combat perceptions that his administration is anti-business and trumpeted the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies. He plans to reiterate that message when he speaks to the Business Roundtable, which represents the heads of many of the biggest U.S. companies, on Feb. 24 in Washington.


                                                     *********

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize economist and New York Times columnist:

The point is that these bank executives are not free agents who are earning big bucks in fair competition; they run companies that are essentially wards of the state. There’s good reason to feel outraged at the growing appearance that we’re running a system of lemon socialism, in which losses are public but gains are private. And at the very least, you would think that Obama would understand the importance of acknowledging public anger over what’s happening.


But no. If the Bloomberg story is to be believed, Obama thinks his key to electoral success is to trumpet “the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies.”

We’re doomed.

Pre-election tremor shakes Chicago, where Obama's political career was born; payback time

A 3.8 magnitude earthquake rattled Chicago-area homes early Wednesday, waking up residents from Indiana to Wisconsin. The quake struck at 3:59 a.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
"It shook the house, rattled the windows and doors," viewer John Bruno wrote in an email. "It woke us out of a sleep and got the dog barking! It shook our whole house!"

The tremor's epicenter was determined to be in a farm field on Plank Road near Hampshire, Illinois. The quake was originally reported as a 4.3 magnitude tremor emanating from Geneva, about five miles east of Sycamore, but the U.S. Geological Survey revised its statement.

John Stossel: statism, not freedom, is winning

When colleges innovated by having students use Kindle e-book readers instead of expensive textbooks, the Justice Department sued them, complaining that the Kindle discriminates against blind students. The department also is suing the Massachusetts prison system because it makes prospective prison guards take a physical test. Since women don't do as well as men on that test, Justice claims the test discriminates against women.

Arthur Brooks, who heads the American Enterprise Institute, says statism is becoming the "central organizing power in our economy," and that the battle between free enterprise and statism will shape our futures. He remains optimistic because a recent poll showed that 70 percent of Americans want free enterprise. I'm less sanguine. In that same poll, 54 percent of Americans said government should exert more control over the economy.

More than 70% disapprove of Congress's work

More than seven in 10 Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing, and as many say they're inclined to look for new congressional representation as said so in 1994 and 2006, the last times that control of Congress shifted.

Asked how they would vote in the November House elections, Americans split evenly -- 46 percent siding with the Democrats, 46 percent with the Republicans. As recently as four months ago, Democrats held a 51 to 39 percent advantage on this question.

Obama's overall approval rating is holding steady, with 51 percent of respondents giving him positive marks and 46 percent rating him negatively. On the big domestic issues -- the economy, health care, jobs and the federal budget deficit -- bare majorities of Americans disapprove of the job he is doing.

Only on fighting terrorism does Obama receive majority support for his performance, with 56 percent saying they approve. But the poll shows majority opposition to the administration's plan to try terrorism suspects in federal courts.

Fannie and Freddie - too big to fail even though they already have failed and may fail again

Nearly a year and a half after the outbreak of the global economic crisis, many of the problems that contributed to it haven't yet been tamed. The U.S. has no system in place to tackle a failure of its largest financial institutions. Derivatives contracts of the kind that crippled American International Group Inc. still trade in the shadows. And investors remain heavily reliant on the same credit-ratings firms that gave AAA ratings to lousy mortgage securities.

Fannie and Freddie, for their part, remain at the core of a housing-finance system that inflated a dangerous housing bubble. After prices collapsed, sending shock waves around the world, the federal government put America's housing-finance system on life support. It has yet to decide how that troubled system should be rebuilt.

On Dec. 24, Treasury said there would be no limit to the taxpayer money it was willing to deploy over the next three years to keep the two companies afloat, doing away with the previous limit of $200 billion per company. So far, the government has handed the two companies a total of about $111 billion.

The government is willing to tolerate such open-ended exposure for two reasons. First, it sees the companies as essential cogs in the fragile housing market. Fannie and Freddie buy mortgages originated by others, holding some as investments and repackaging others for sale to investors as securities. Together with the Federal Housing Administration, they fund nine in 10 American mortgages. Worries about potential insolvency would cripple their ability to fund home loans, which would hamstring the market.

Support for White House, fed economic policies dives to 38% as faith in big government falls

Voters are souring on the economy and the government’s remedies, according to February's IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index. It fell 4.1% to 46.8, matching December’s level and the weakest since July.

“Persisting high unemployment and a wobbly stock market dampened January’s optimism,” said Raghavan Mayur, president of TIPP, IBD’s polling partner. Readings below 50 signal pessimism.

Confidence in federal economic politics dived 7% to 38.3, the lowest since President Obama took office. That's consistent with other polls showing a strong shift by Americans away from big government over the past year. The $787 billion stimulus failed to keep unemployment from soaring to double digits, now 9.7%. But it helped the deficit explode to $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2009, with $1.6 trillion seen in 2010.

Michelle Malkin posts a riposte to "Miss me yet?"

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but someone has to do it.

The “Miss Me Yet?” billboard (inspired by Jonathan Maney’s t-shirts) is cute. But let’s not get carried away with nostalgia.

President Bush put America on the proper war footing after 9/11 and deserves much credit for doing so, but he also:

1) joined with open-borders progressives McCain and Kennedy to try to force shamnesty down our throats;

2) massively expanded the federal role in education;

3) championed the Medicare prescription drug entitlement using phony math;

4) kowtowed to the jihadi-enabling Saudis;

5) stocked DHS with incompetents and cronies;

6) pushed Hillarycare for housing;

7) enabled turncoat Arlen Specter;

8) nominated crony Harriet Myers to the Supreme Court;

9) pre-socialized the economy for Obama by embracing TARP, the auto bailouts, the AIG bailout, and in his own words: "I've abandoned free market principles to sve the free market system."

News flash: billboards lead U.S. out of recession

Link of the day...

BAYH BAYH: Coats announces senate run in Indiana...

from Drudge

Throw all the bums out of Congress? 63% say yes

Most voters think the country would be better off if the majority of the current Congress wasn’t reelected this November, and their confidence in their own congressman continues to fall.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 63% of likely voters believe, generally speaking, that it would be better for the country if most incumbents in Congress were defeated this November.

Just 19% disagree and say it would be better if most congressional incumbents were reelected. Another 18% aren’t sure.

The Political Class strongly rejects these views, however. While 78% of Mainstream voters say it would be better for the country if most of the current Congress was turned out of office, 89% of the Political Class think it would be better if most were reelected.

Muslim hired to train soldiers after Fort Hood shootings under investigation for radical ties

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan wasn't the only guy with extremist ties counseling soldiers at Fort Hood last year, as my story in Sunday's Dallas Morning News shows.

There was at least one more: Louay Safi (shown at right). A month after the worst military-base massacre in U.S. history, he taught Islam to officers who were deploying to Afghanistan. He'd been doing this work on bases around the country, as a military subcontractor, since 2005.

That same year, federal prosecutors named Safi an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism-support trial of his old buddy Sami al-Arian. The reason: a wiretapped phone call in which the two men mocked a U.S. order banning dealings with foreign terrorist groups and agreed that Jews controlled the White House.

Al-Arian has since been convicted. But he still faces criminal contempt charges for refusing to testify before a grand jury about the International Institute of Islamic Thought -- a northern Virginia think tank that counterterrorism agents raided in 2002, when Safi was its research director.

Safi now faces a criminal inquiry by the military but has never been criminally charged. He denies wrongdoing. He also has described post-9/11 counterterrorism crackdowns as a "campaign against Islam."

Does that phrase sound familiar? "War against Islam" is a term used by both Hasan and the al-Qaeda-connected imam he consulted before the Fort Hood massacre.

Since 2004, Safi has been a top official at the Islamic Society of North America. An ISNA-related trust owns the northern Virginia mosque where Hasan met his imam in 2001.

The imam, a U.S.-born resident of Yemen named Anwar al-Awlaki, is now suspected of aiding the Underwear Bomber -- the young fellow who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25. Al-Awlaki was questioned by the FBI repeatedly about his ties to the 9/11 hijackers, some of whom attended his Virginia mosque.

Tea Party candidate surges in Texas GOP primary

Tea Party candidate Debra Medina has surged and is now favored by 24 percent in the Texas Republican primary election for governor. If she continues to gain, she could force a runoff with Gov. Rick Perry, favored by 39 percent, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who has 28 percent.

Public Policy Polling reports, "Medina is clearly riding the wave of discontent with the Republican establishment. Among primary voters who disapprove of the job the GOP in Congress is doing she actually leads with 37% to 32% for Perry and 22% for Hutchison. The problem for Medina is those folks only account for a third of the electorate and among the majority who are happy with the Republicans in Washington she's in a distant third at 17% to 48% for Perry and 27% for Hutchison. There may not end up being enough discontented Republican voters for her to move into the top two but she is nevertheless exceeding expectations.

"Hutchison's issues are twofold: voters trust Washington politicians even less than usual right now and she's simply not connecting with the conservative voters who dominate a GOP primary electorate. Asked whether they have more faith in Washington politicians or Austin politicians to solve Texas' problems 78% said the state level ones to just 3% picking the national level. And while Hutchison has a commanding 49-29 lead over Perry with moderate voters, she is in last place with conservatives. Perry leads the pack at 42% followed by Medina at 25% and Hutchison at 23%. 76% of likely primary voters are conservatives to only 20% who are moderates."

About that "Miss me yet?" billboard in MN

75 % of likely voters angy at government policies

Voters are madder than ever at the current policies of the federal government.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 75% of likely voters now say they are at least somewhat angry at the government’s current policies, up four points from late November and up nine points since September. The overall figures include 45% who are Very Angry, also a nine-point increase since September.

Just 19% now say they’re not very or not at all angry at the government’s policies, down eight points from the previous survey and down 11 from September. That 19% includes only eight percent (8%) who say they’re not angry at all and 11% who are not very angry.

Part of the frustration is likely due to the belief of 60% of voters that neither Republican political leaders nor Democratic political leaders have a good understanding of what is needed today. That finding is identical to the view last September, just after the tumultuous congressional town hall meetings the month before. But only 52% felt this way in November.

70 % want smaller deficit; 11 % would spend more

Richard Nixon once said, “We’re all Keynesians now.” But that was a long time ago, and it’s certainly not the case anymore (if it ever was).

While influential 20th Century economist John Maynard Keynes would say it’s best to increase deficit spending in tough economic times, only 11% of American adults agree and think the nation needs to increase its deficit spending at this time. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 70% disagree and say it would be better to cut the deficit.

In fact, 59% think Keynes had it backwards and that increasing the deficit at this time would hurt the economy rather than help.

To help the economy, most Americans (56%) believe that cutting the deficit is the way to go.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of Americans, in fact, say the size of the federal budget deficit is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.

(Note: John Maynard Keynes considered deficit spending acceptable as an antidote for brief recessions and natural disasters. He did not favor deficit spending to pay for structural shortfalls, such as Medicare and Social Security obligations, which loom large at this time. In fact, Keynes considered slower growth an inevitable result of such spending.)

Mysterious poke at Obama billboard appears along I35 between St. Paul and Duluth, MN

Seeking redemption, Nelson could block NLRB pick

Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson (D) on Monday announced he would oppose Craig Becker's nomination to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) -- a move that could ultimately scuttle Becker's confirmation indefinitely.

Senate Democratic leaders needed the help of their entire 59-vote caucus, plus one Republican defector, to invoke cloture this Tuesday on Becker's nomination, which has awaited a full Senate vote since the summer of 2009. But Nelson's decision to oppose the White House's top candidate for the job seriously threatens those plans, as it now appears Democrats will not have the votes they need to proceed as intended this week.

Special election coming in John Murtha's PA district, which voted for Kerry in '04, McCain in '08

Without Murtha in the 12th district, however, the special election will be seriously contested. Murtha's district is the only one in the country won by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004 and by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008, according to Republican sources, and that trend line coupled with the volatile national environment for Democrats ensures Republicans will heavily target the contest.

Prior to Murtha's passing, there were two Republicans in the race: 2008 nominee Bill Russell and businessman Tim Burns. It remains to be seen whether either or both men run in the special election although, regardless, it is a certainty the field will grow as ambitious Republicans (and Democrats) see the chance to get to Congress in an abbreviated campaign.

Obama is Oprah with a presidential seal

The coming health-care summit is just the latest example of how the president prefers public discussion of problems to rolling up his sleeves and fixing them.

Three cheers for democracy! Obama's appearance at the Republicans' retreat in Baltimore was so well-received that the exciting new format is back by popular demand, with the president now planning to hold a televised "bipartisan summit" on health care at the end of this month. Barack Obama might not have a clue as to how to get his legislative way, but in his own private war against the indecency and incivility of politics, he is winning.

If ever there was any doubt that Barack Obama loves civics but hates politics, it was dispelled during the "fascinating" and "groundbreaking" exchange Obama had with the Republicans last Tuesday. This is a president who blames the media for trivializing politics at the same time he is abandoning politics for media-savvy talk-a-thons which accomplish nothing.

Obama is Oprah with a presidential seal. Does he really think that posturing in front of the cameras is the antidote to haggling in the proverbial smoke-filled room?

57% of indies disapprove of Obama's performance

A new Marist poll of registered voters nationwide puts Barack Obama’s approval at just 44%, the same as the Rasmussen tracking poll this weekend. The numbers among independents will really rattle the White House:

Fewer registered voters nationwide — 44% — currently approve of President Barack Obama’s job performance than disapprove — 47%. When Marist last asked about the president’s approval rating in December, 46% thought well of Obama’s job performance while 44% gave him low marks.

Perhaps, particularly concerning for Mr. Obama is the drop in support among Independents. For the first time since taking office, a majority of Independents — 57% — disapproves of how he is doing in the role. 29% approve, and 14% are unsure.

NY Gov. Paterson being teed up: "He's become paranoid; he sits gnashing his teeth" over scandal

ALBANY -- Gov. Paterson is lashing out at top aides for the growing debacle surrounding what they consider a "corrupt" Aqueduct gambling deal decision -- and suggesting that they'll soon be fired, The Post has learned.

"He's become paranoid. He sits gnashing his teeth, looking around for scapegoats among the people around him," said a source frequently in contact with Paterson. "He's lecturing them, launching into tirades, and he's demoralized the entire staff in the process."

In response, several Paterson aides have signaled they may quit over what some call his "corrupt decision" to give the lucrative Aqueduct gaming contract to a questionable consortium that includes the Rev. Floyd Flake of Queens, whose political support the poll-challenged governor has aggressively sought.

"Aqueduct was the last straw for many of them, they all want out," said a source close to Paterson's aides. "Even on the inside, the Aqueduct decision is seen as corrupt," added a second administration source.

For months, aides to Paterson privately complained about what they called the governor's lack of focus on critical issues, his poor work habits and late-night, booze-fueled "disappearances" at trendy nightclubs and undisclosed locations -- when even his State Police bodyguards don't know where he is.

RINO of the day: how to desecrate the party label

Should a congressman with this record be rewarded with a 15th term in office?

• Voted for Cap and Trade

• Co-sponsored Card Check

• Voted twice with Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats against making the 2001/2003 tax cuts (Bush tax cuts) permanent

• Voted to allow the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to sue companies that require employees to speak English

• Voted with Nancy Pelosi to defeat a 2008 Republican budget resolution which would reduce spending $12 billion and impose a moratorium on pork barrel earmarks

• Voted twice to increase taxes on domestic energy producers (which is passed on the consumer)

• Vote three times against drilling at ANWR

• Voted for the Pelosi light bulb bill in which the government will decide the type of light bulbs you can use in your own home

• Voted for Barney Frank’s housing trust fund

• Voted against free speech when he supported a bill to regulate the Internet including, email and blogs

• Accepts tens of thousands of dollars from Big Labor Unions each election cycle

Would you have guessed that these votes came from a Republican?

This is the record of 28-year incumbent Republican Chris Smith from New Jersey’s Fourth Congressional District (NJ-4). Believe it or not, these are just a few of his votes from the last two legislative sessions. Is it a wonder why Smith has earned the ranking as one of the most liberal Republicans in the House by the American Conservative Union. This goes along with his “F” rating from American Gun Owners and “D” rating from the NRA.

Shelby blocking Obama appointees in pursuit of new refueling tanker jobs for Alabama

Last week Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby put a “hold” on all Obama nominations for executive branch positions -- about seventy all told – to pressure the Air Force into changing the terms of its “request for proposals” for the award of the multi-billion dollar air refueling tanker aircraft contract.

The Northrup-Grumman/Airbus team plans to build some of the aircraft in Alabama, building a new plant and presumably hiring and training hundreds of Shelby’s constituents.

A spokesman for Shelby bemoaned the lack of a “transparent and fair” process for tanker acquisition, but what is clear from the senator’s announcement blocking presidential appointees is that bringing earmark dollars home to Alabama is more important to Shelby than what the Air Force, and the nation, needs for future defense.

Apparently the pork, and the jobs Shelby wants for his home state, rank above what the Air Force needs to replace the aged KC-135 tanker fleet. Shelby’s attempt to hold the appointment process hostage to gain political advantage toward landing Alabama a new aircraft assembly (not manufacturing, because the airframe components would be built in Europe) plant and an FBI explosives test center.

A single senator can stall a particular nomination almost indefinitely, a commonly used procedure for individual lawmakers wielding power to impede government process. Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions currently has blocks on two Pentagon appointees (not based on the Airbus question), but a blanket hold is considered a rare senatorial action.

New reality: unions rely on government for growth

Growing up in Michigan in the heyday of the United Auto Workers, I long assumed that labor unions were part of the natural order of things.

That's no longer clear. Last month the Labor Department reported that private-sector unions lost 834,000 members last year and now represent only 7.2 percent of private-sector employees. That's down from the all-time peak of 36 percent in 1953 and '54.

But union membership is still growing in the public sector. Last year 37.4 percent of public-sector employees were union members. That percentage was down near zero in the 1950s. For the first time in history, a majority of union members are government employees.

Approval of Congress drops 6 points in one month

Palin, Romney strong in Newsmax-Zogby poll

A recent Newsmax Media-Zogby poll showed former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin leading the Republican field as the party’s preferred candidate for president in 2012.

And a breakdown of demographic and other data from the survey offers some interesting insights on current Republican thinking about GOP candidates in the next presidential election:

Sarah Palin, who grabbed 22.2 percent of the vote in the poll, is more popular in the East than anywhere else in the country. Interestingly, she has been described as a Western and Southern candidate, but our Zogby poll found that 25 percent of Easterners supported her. The West, in fact, gave her the lowest figure — 20 percent.

Palin is not as strong with 65-plus voters — her percentage there dropped to 19.7 percent. She seems to be popular with younger voters, with 23 percent of those between ages 18 and 29 supporting her.

Newt Gingrich came in at 12.4 percent, but he seems to skew with stronger support among males, 14 percent, while female Republican voters gave him 11 percent.

Palin skews favorably with women, with 23.3 percent of Republican women supporting her compared to 21 percent of Republican men. She also does very well in the 55-to-69 demographic group, where 24 percent of Republicans back her. That number drops dramatically to just 14 percent in the 70-plus group.

Mike Huckabee seems to be a favorite of black Republicans, garnering 24.2 percent of the vote, more than any other candidate in the field.

Palin draws exceedingly well with born-again and Evangelical Christians, pulling a strong 28.4 percent of their vote. She also gets strong support from less educated voters — 28.6 percent of those who said they did not have a college degree voted for her, while those with a college degree gave her just 18.5 percent.

Mitt Romney had consistently strong poll numbers across all demographic groups. Interestingly, although he is a Mormon, he led the pack among Catholic voters, even beating out Palin, 23.6 percent to 21.1 percent.

Romney also seems to be very favorably viewed by Jewish Republicans, gaining a remarkable 32 percent of their support.

Andrew Breitbart at National Tea Party Convention

An expert on KGB tactics argues a Marxist-style campaign of subversion is destroying the U.S.

White House is butchering Keynesian economics as flagrantly as the undead word "corpsman"

The Obama White House likes to say that the theories of John Maynard Keynes form the foundation for its fiscal policies. Most notably, it draws upon the legendary British economist's idea of spending big to pull out of a recession.

But one economist says the administration has gotten Keynes only half right. Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon is one of the most influential monetarists of the past 50 years. He has served in the Department of the Treasury under President Kennedy and on the Council of Economic Advisors during the Reagan Administration. He also authored the book, Keynes's Monetary Theory: A Different Interpretation.

While the Obama team is laying out huge sums of money, Meltzer says it's neglecting a key part of Keynes' plan: You can't run up a debt without a way to cover it.

Meltzer recently sat down with Fortune editor-at-large Shawn Tully. Below are edited excerpts from their conversation.

If Keynes were alive today, what would he think of President Obama's fiscal policies?

He would roll over in his grave if he could see the things being done in his name. Keynes was opposed to large structural deficits. He thought that they chilled rather than stimulated the economy. It's true that we're stuck with large deficits now. The goal should be to reduce them, not to take on new spending that makes them worse.

First Afghanistan, then Iraq, now Pakistan; the undeclared war takes on a life of its own

THE discovery of three American soldiers among the dead in a suicide bombing at the opening of a girls’ school in the northwestern Pakistan town of Dir last week reignited the fears of many Pakistanis that Washington was set on invading their country.

Barack Obama has banned the Bush-era term “war on terror” and dithered about sending extra troops to Afghanistan, but across the border in Pakistan, the US president has dramatically stepped up the covert war against Islamic extremists.

US airstrikes in Pakistan, launched from unmanned drones, are now averaging three a week, triple the number last year. “We're quietly seeing a geographical shift,” an intelligence officer said.

For the past month drones have pounded the tribal region of North Waziristan in apparent retaliation for the murder of seven CIA officers in Afghanistan by a Jordanian suicide bomber working with the Pakistani Taliban.

Last week America launched its first multiple drone attack, according to Pakistani security officials. Eighteen missiles were fired from eight unmanned aircraft in Dattakhel village, killing 16 people.

The discovery of the dead US soldiers revealed that America’s shadowy war in Pakistan not only involves drones but also small cadres of special operations soldiers.

Andrew Breitbart to mainstream media at Tea Party convention: "It's you that sucks"

Song from 'Rush Limbaugh, the Musical"

Here is a first-rate examination of Atlas Shrugged, the 1959 Ayn Rand novel now in robust revival

Here, finally, is a comprehensible, but incomplete, explanation of Obama's stance toward the jihadists

At the end of the day, all jihadist terrorists can really do is kill. But the more they kill, the more they alienate their fellow Muslims. As the French scholar Gilles Kepel has pointed out, the reason jihadists turned their attention to the United States in the first place was because they utterly failed in the 1990s to overthrow the governments of Algeria and Egypt. They failed because the more people they killed, the more hated they became. And when they lost popular support, they were easily crushed.

In recent years, the dynamic has been playing itself out again. In countries like Pakistan and Jordan, where al Qaeda keeps slaughtering innocent Muslims, its public support has fallen off a cliff. During the Bush years, the only thing that kept al Qaeda from complete ideological collapse was Muslim hatred of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our unblinking support for Muslim dictatorships and for Israel, and our use of torture at places like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay.

Now Obama, by pledging to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and close Gitmo, and by eschewing torture—in other words, by not overreacting to the terrorist threat—is cutting al Qaeda’s throat. Although the U.S. government is still not exactly loved in Muslim nations, it is hated less. Between 2008 and 2009, according to Gallup, approval of U.S. policies rose 23 points in Tunisia, 22 points in Algeria, 19 points in Egypt, 17 points in Saudi Arabia and 13 points in Kuwait. In Indonesia, according to the Pew Research Center, approval of the U.S. rose 26 points. And not coincidentally, al Qaeda’s slide seems to be accelerating. Between 2003 and 2009, according to Pew, support for Osama bin Laden has dropped 34 points in Indonesia, 28 points in Pakistan, 28 points in Jordan, 20 points in the Palestinian territories, 16 points in Lebanon and 13 points in Turkey. In Indonesia and Pakistan, much of the decline has occurred in the last year alone. Bin Laden is having so much trouble demonizing the United States that his last audio tape focused on climate change.

Global warming, a colossal social engineering project based on colossal lies, is declared dead

In 2007, the most comprehensive report to date on global warming, issued by the respected United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made a shocking claim: The Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035.

These glaciers provide the headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers and lifelines for the more than one billion people who live downstream. Melting ice and snow would create mass flooding, followed by mass drought. The glacier story was reported around the world. Last December, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group, warned, “The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty.” To dramatize their country's plight, Nepal's top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks and held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest.

But the claim was rubbish, and the world's top glaciologists knew it. It was based not on rigorously peer-reviewed science but on an anecdotal report by the WWF itself. When its background came to light on the eve of Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, shrugged it off. But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.

“The global warming movement as we have known it is dead,” the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics."

Meet the conservative who threatens to unhorse Harry Reid

A critic contends the U.S. military has become a tool of Machiavellians at the U.N.

Since WWII, American forces have fought major wars in South Korea, South Vietnam (including Laos and Cambodia), Kosovo, the Persian Gulf (Kuwait), Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan—all for the benefit of the United Nations. Add to these major wars lesser conflicts (except to those Americans killed or wounded in them) such as Lebanon, Dominican Republic, Congo (Zaire), Iran, El Salvador, Libya, Grenada, Honduras, Chad, Panama, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Tanzania, and Somalia. And this does not take into account the countless CIA-sponsored Black Ops missions that have taken place all over the world.

Yes, American forces have been used to both put people in power and take people out of power all over the world. And as often as not, the people we put in power were counted among the "bad guys," while the people we removed from power were "good guys." Remember, our own CIA was the organization most responsible for the rise to power of Osama Bin Laden. And it was the US government that surreptitiously set up the murder of Dr. Jonas Savimbi, who was one of the best friends the United States had overseas. Plus, does anyone remember how the US treated our friend, the Shah of Iran? Yes, some of us are old enough to remember when Iran was one of the best friends we had in that region of the world.

But mind you, not one single war in which American forces have been engaged since WWII has been constitutionally fought. Not one!

Ever since the United Nations was created, its interests have dominated the usage of US forces. In fact, our military today is quickly morphing into the tip of the spear for a burgeoning, global New World Order. To those with eyes to see, the evidence is everywhere. It's not even being hidden anymore. Have you seen that new US Navy television commercial? It boldly proclaims, "The US Navy: A GLOBAL FORCE For Good." (Emphasis added.)

This politically correct, UN-dominated New World Order has changed (and is changing) our US military right before our eyes. It has taken the greatest and proudest independent fighting force in the world—one created to defend the people and property of the United States—and turned it into a global military policeman for the evil Machiavellians at the UN.

Lone GOP supporter of Obamacare gets his reward

Rep. Joseph Cao (La.), the only House Republican who voted for healthcare reform, is also the only GOPer going to the Super Bowl party at the White House.

The White House released a list of lawmakers expected to attend that included seven Democrats and Cao, the Republican who won the New Orleans seat held by Rep. Willliam [sic] Jefferson (D-La.)…

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) attended last year’s Super Bowl party at Obama’s new house. He rooted for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who won their sixth Super Bowl that year. A few months later, the Republican switched parties and became a Democrat…

Cao is the only Louisiana lawmaker attending the White House party…

Scott Brown's strategists appear ready to rout Democrat Rep. Patrick Kennedy in Rhode Island

The Kennedy political dynasty is shaking in the aftershock of U.S. Sen. Scott Brown’s earth-shattering election, with a new poll showing U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy losing ground as he faces a well-financed GOP foe backed by Brown’s top strategists.

The WPRI-12 poll showed the Rhode Island Democrat with a 56 percent unfavorability rating in his district - a negative that grows to 62 percent statewide.

Only 35 percent of voters in Kennedy’s district said they would vote to re-elect him. Another 31 percent said they’d consider a different candidate and 28 percent said they would vote to replace him, according to the poll.

Republican John J. Loughlin II, a veteran state lawmaker, formally announced his campaign yesterday against Kennedy, saying the son of liberal icon Edward M. Kennedy is out of touch with Rhode Island voters as he seeks a ninth two-year term

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spins Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts

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70% oppose stepped up spending during recession

Richard Nixon once said, “We’re all Keynesians now.” But that was a long time ago, and it’s certainly not the case anymore (if it ever was).

While influential 20th Century economist John Maynard Keynes would say it’s best to increase deficit spending in tough economic times, only 11% of American adults agree and think the nation needs to increase its deficit spending at this time. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 70% disagree and say it would be better to cut the deficit.

In fact, 59% think Keynes had it backwards and that increasing the deficit at this time would hurt the economy rather than help.

To help the economy, most Americans (56%) believe that cutting the deficit is the way to go.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of Americans, in fact, say the size of the federal budget deficit is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.

Too good to be true? Principled politician, mountain climber, former ski racer

Obama has pointed out a new calamity: the silent P

President Barack Obama on Friday called for a new $10 billion campaign, staffed by 500 educators, to cope with anomalies in the English language.

While the scope will be open ended, it was understood that the campaign would focus on the letter P.

Although Obama is regarded, by Obama, as the smartest president in American history, he was reduced to a laughing-stock Thursday by his mispronunciation of the word corpsman. In a speech, Obama pronounced the word as corpseman three times.

As word of the blooper spread, and the nation laughed, Obama fired his teleprompter for failing to warn him of the hazardous P.

In reality, the P can be a difficult character. Accompanied by an h, the P is pronounced as an f, as any sophisticated philosopher or sophist knows.

The word Philippines is a double hazard. After handling the Ph, one has to deal with the double P, which is pronounced as if it were a single P.

Then we have the silent P, which tripped up Obama. How is one to know when to pronounce the P or pretend it isn't even there?

How about putting a slash through the P to indicate it's silent?

Free Press: Want to see a preview of Obama's America? Look at the ruins of Granholm's Michigan

Detroit — Most Americans are just getting warmed up to the idea of a self-centered chief executive who has divined America’s future as a green economy and is brashly installing the industrial-policy tools to get us there. But we here in Michigan have been living it since Gov. Jennifer Granholm took office in 2003.

On Wednesday night, the flashy second-term governor celebrated the “change” she’s brought to Michigan in her final State of the State address. Read it and weep.

Granholm entered office on the tired heels of a three-term Republican with a wave of good tidings as the state’s first female governor. Beautiful, silver-tongued, and Harvard Law–educated, Granholm was a young pol with little executive seasoning. Supremely self-confident despite her inexperience, Granholm raised income taxes (as the state’s economy literally and figuratively headed south), “invested” billions of stimulus dollars in infrastructure that she predicted would create tens of thousands of jobs, mandated renewable-power standards, and backed them up with millions in government subsidies to transform Michigan from “the Rust Belt to the Green Belt.” In her 2006 State of the State address, she promised that “in five years, you’ll be blown away.”

Four years in and it’s blowing hard, all right. Michigan’s unemployment rate has more than doubled, to over 14 percent. Yes, the state’s per capita income drop from 20th in the nation to 40th has tracked a historic restructuring of the state’s auto industry, but Granholm’s Obamaesque policy prescriptions have been anti-growth while fueling budget deficits to record highs.

Almost two-thirds of Dems view socialism favorably

The Gallup Poll reports that a majority of Democrats, 53%, have a “positive” image of socialism, which includes independents who lean toward the blue party.

Only 17 percent of Republican and GOP-leaners hold socialism in a positive light. In total, more than one-third of Americans, 36%, have a positive image of socialism.

Also viewing socialism positively: 61% of liberals, 39% of moderates and 20% of conservatives.

The poll comes at a precarious time for the political left. The headline of my column Thursday: "Dems Haunted by Revived Stereotypes." As I wrote, we have seen "the return of 'socialist' as a rhetorical dodge ball, evoking mid-twentieth century framing wars." Senator Joe McCarthy must be rolling over in his grave (or maybe it's Henry Wallace). This poll won't help Obama's effort to refute the resurgent stereotypes, whether its socialism or "tax and spend liberal."

Click on this headline for a video assessment of Obama's narcissism

Dr. Ali Sina explores the possibility that Barack Obama suffers from narcissitic personality disorder.

Obama introduces a new word

Now that the glamor has gone, the Obama Store closes its doors in Washington's Union Station

One sign that Washington, D.C., had been home to Obama Mania was the number of independent retailers selling all sorts of Obama merchandise. Every street corner, it seemed, had Obama wares (or Obama wear) for sale. Now, however, most of the winter caps for sale are not emblazoned with the Obama logo. T-shirts depicting our president as a dunking Michael Jordan, a victorious Muhammad Ali, or saber-baring Luke Skywalker (yes, these shirts all existed) are nowhere to be found.

This time last year, the Obama Store was teeming with customers. Ideally situated in the basement of Washington’s Union Station, the store was filled with consumers eager to buy anything with Obama’s likeness while others took pictures of the life-size cut-outs of the president and first lady. Now, the Obama Store is boarded up.

Global warming movement is declared dead, done in by "bad science and bad politics"

First came the Climategate e-mails made public in November that showed how top-level climate scientists distorted research, plotted to destroy data and conspired to prevent publication of dissenting views. The British government concluded last week that the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit violated the nation's freedom of information act, although the violations occurred too long ago for prosecution.

The CRU has been a major source of data for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which for 20 years has issued alarms about supposed global warming. The e-mails conclusively establish the intellectual dishonesty of the climate scientists at the CRU and their co-conspirators.

Recently there have been even more shocking revelations. The IPCC has claimed that warming will cause the Himalayan glaciers to disappear by 2035. It turns out that that claim was based solely on a pamphlet published by the World Wildlife Federation, based on no science at all. The head of the IPCC was informed that a 1996 report said those glaciers could melt significantly by 2350, not 2035, but he let the claim stand.

As Christopher Booker writes in the Telegraph of London, "A Canadian analyst has identified more than 20 passages in the IPCC's report which cite similarly non-peer-reviews WWF or Greenpeace reports as their authority." Similarly, the Times of London reports that a claim that warming could endanger "up to 40 percent" of the Amazon rain forest came from an anti-smoking activist and had no scientific basis whatever.

"The global warming movement as we have known it is dead," writes Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations in The American Interest. "The movement died from two causes: bad science and bad politics."

Polls show GOP could take control of Senate

The long-shot bid by Republicans to retake control of the Senate is suddenly in play, as the prospect of high-profile Republican candidates entering the fray has pushed the GOP even or ahead in polling for 10 races.

The potential candidacies of former Republican Govs. George E. Pataki in New York and Tommy G. Thompson in Wisconsin are improving the polling fortunes of the party as it pursues seats long in the hands of Democrats, while the anti-government "tea party" movement has provided momentum to Republican challengers in states such as Florida, Arkansas and Pennsylvania.

"If the election were held today, the Republicans could come close to winning back the Senate, if not actually win it," said pollster John Zogby.

Republicans are solidly ahead to take at least five seats now held by Democrats — in North Dakota, Delaware, Nevada, Arkansas and Pennsylvania. Five more are now considered winnable — Colorado, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and even liberal New York. Two other races, in California and Washington, are tightening daily.

Global warming alarmists censored critics

Scientists sometimes like to portray what they do as divorced from the everyday jealousies, rivalries and tribalism of human relationships. What makes science special is that data and results that can be replicated are what matters and the scientific truth will out in the end.

But a close reading of the emails hacked from the University of East Anglia in November exposes the real process of everyday science in lurid detail.

Many of the emails reveal strenuous efforts by the mainstream climate scientists to do what outside observers would regard as censoring their critics. And the correspondence raises awkward questions about the effectiveness of peer review – the supposed gold standard of scientific merit – and the operation of the UN's top climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The scientists involved disagree. They say they were engaged not in suppressing dissent but in upholding scientific standards by keeping bad science out of peer-reviewed journals. Either way, when passing judgment on papers that directly attack their own work, they were mired in conflicts of interest that would not be allowed in most professions.

In Yemen reformers use U.S. flag to rally supporters

A look at the chaos in Yemen

The global reach of al Qaeda in Yemen became clear when a Nigerian disciple of the murder cult nearly blew up an airliner over Detroit. In response, the Obama administration is strengthening its support for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, one of the regions longest serving dictators and one of the most corrupt.

President Obama said he hopes to communicate to “Muslims around the world that al Qaeda offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death, including the murder of fellow Muslims, while the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress.” The hypocrisy is stunning.

The US administration is well aware that Saleh’s government is committing atrocities against civilians that rise to the level of war crimes. In a Darfur-like conflict in Sa’ada, northern Yemen, collective punishment of Shiite civilians includes indiscriminate bombing and intentional starvation. A former recruiter for Usama bin Laden leads the military with the help of tribal militias, former Iraqi army officers and foreign jihaddists. Over 200,000 are homeless from the war and largely deprived of aid. When Oxfam warned of a “humanitarian catastrophe of terrifying proportions,” the Yemeni Health Minister threatened to expel the organization.

Gallup survey on attitudes toward regulatory state

Cato graph

The I man, a study in narcissism

Republicans lead by 7 on generic ballot, by 20 among independent voters

Republican candidates lead Democrats by seven points in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The new national telephone survey shows that 45% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 38% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. Voter support for GOP congressional candidates is down one point from last week, while support for Democrats is up a point.

Republicans started the year ahead by nine points -- their largest lead in several years -- while support for Democrats fell to its lowest level in years. Republicans have held the lead on the ballot for several months now.

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the GOP leads this week by a 45% to 25% margin.

Tuitions are rising rapidly, but the estimated value of a college degree is shrinking

A college education may not be worth as much as you think.

For years, higher education was touted as a safe path to professional and financial success. Easy money, in the form of student loans, flowed to help parents and students finance degrees, with the implication that in the long run, a bachelor's degree was a good bet. Graduates, it has long been argued, would be able to build solid careers that would earn them far more than their high-school educated counterparts.
The gap between pay for college graduates and high school graduates isn't as wide as has been reported.

The numbers appeared to back it up. In recent years, the nonprofit College Board touted the difference in lifetime earnings of college grads over high-school graduates at $800,000, a widely circulated figure. Other estimates topped $1 million.

But now, as tuition continues to skyrocket and many seeking to change careers are heading back to school, some researchers are questioning the methodology behind the high projections.

Most researchers agree that college graduates, even in rough economies, generally fare better than individuals with only high-school diplomas. But just how much better is where the math gets fuzzy.

The problem stems from the common source of the estimates, a 2002 Census Bureau report titled "The Big Payoff." The report said the average high-school graduate earns $25,900 a year, and the average college graduate earns $45,400, based on 1999 data. The difference between the two figures is $19,500; multiply it by 40 years, as the Census Bureau did, and the result is $780,000.

Centrist Dems working on alternative that would kill U.S. exports more slowly than cap and trade

With the Senate cap-and-trade bill on ice for the foreseeable future, a key bloc of Democrats is agitating for a Climate Plan B: an existing energy policy bill they say would put the US on the path to a clean energy future. Make that a road to nowhere. The bill in question lacks any kind of cap on carbon, and contains so many concessions to the oil, coal, gas, and nuclear industries that one environmental group has dubbed it a "flashback to Bush energy policy."

For months, a gaggle of centrist Democrats has tried to convince the party's leaders that they should abandon their push for a cap-and-trade scheme and instead settle for passing the energy measure that was approved by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee last June. When Republican Scott Brown seized Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat in an upset victory, these Plan B proponents saw their chance. Since then, they've been vigorously arguing that capping carbon is a huge political risk that Democrats can't afford to take in an election year. "They're using uncertainty over the Obama agenda as a whole to reinvigorate their push," said Joe Mendelson, director of global warming policy at the National Wildlife Federation.

The Plan B crowd includes Democratic senators Jim Webb, Mary Landrieu, Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, Mark Pryor, and Blanche Lincoln. It could also potentially pick up the Republicans who voted the energy measure out of committee: senators Lisa Murkowski, Sam Brownback, Bob Corker, and Jeff Sessions.

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Lech Walesa the enemy in Daleyland; who knew?

Hacked emails reveal still more fakery by global warming "scientists," related to Chinese data

A Guardian investigation of thousands of emails and documents apparently hacked from the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit has found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.

Jones and a collaborator have been accused by a climate change sceptic and researcher of scientific fraud for attempting to suppress data that could cast doubt on a key 1990 study on the effect of cities on warming – a hotly contested issue.

Today the Guardian reveals how Jones withheld the information requested under freedom of information laws. Subsequently a senior colleague told him he feared that Jones's collaborator, Wei-­Chyung Wang of the University at Albany, had "screwed up".

The revelations on the inadequacies of the 1990 paper do not undermine the case that humans are causing climate change, and other studies have produced similar findings. But they do call into question the probity of some climate change science.

The apparent attempts to cover up problems with temperature data from the Chinese weather stations provide the first link between the email scandal and the UN's embattled climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a paper based on the measurements was used to bolster IPCC statements about rapid global warming in recent decades.

Lincoln trails GOP challenger by 56 to 33 percent in Arkansas poll; has approval of 27%

John Boozman will enter the Arkansas Senate race this weekend as the frontrunner. He leads incumbent Blanche Lincoln by an amazing 56-33 margin in our first poll of the race.

Lincoln's approval rating has sunk to just 27%, with 62% of voters in the state disapproving of her. She's at a middling 51% even within her own party and just 17% of independents and 9% of Republicans are happy with how she's doing.

A look inside the health care issue gives a good indication of how Lincoln has managed now to get it from all sides. 61% of voters in the state oppose the President's plan, and among those folks Lincoln's approval rating is just 8% with 79% of them expressing the belief that she's too liberal. But she's managed to antagonize a lot of the people who support the Democratic health care plan as well- 36% of them think she's too conservative and her approval with them is just 57%. Barack Obama's at 95% with that same group of voters.

Heart surgery for provincial premier, in the U.S.

ST. JOHN'S, N.L.—Premier Danny Williams of Newfoundland and Labrador is undergoing heart surgery in the United States later this week because the treatment he is seeking was not available in his home province, his deputy premier said Tuesday.

Williams, 60, decided to go to the U.S. for surgery after weeks of consultation with his doctors, Kathy Dunderdale said.

"Having the surgery done in the province was never an option," Dunderdale said.

"Obviously, it's taken some time to have the diagnosis, progress, consultation with a number of medical experts, so it has taken several weeks."

Dunderdale would not reveal what the surgery was beyond the fact that it was heart surgery. She also declined to say where and what day it will take place and whether the type of surgery Williams is having was available elsewhere in the country.

Coming soon: bombs and detonators in body cavities

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