In the wake of the publication of the East Anglia e-mails, information strengthening the case of global warming skeptics has been coming to light at such a rapid pace than even the most dedicated followers of this debate can barely keep track of the data coming to light.  Al Gore has cancelled his $1,200 a head reception in Copenhagen.  One of the chief advocates of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis (thanks for the correction, Dave!) got quite testy in confronting a critic.

And the UK’s Met Office (its National Weather Service)

. . . plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.

In other words, as Sonicfrog (who alerted me to this article) notes, “those now examining the state of everything that went on have absolutely no confidence that things were done properly.”  Well, it seems they got cold feet about their reexamination and won’t be doing a do-over, but will be making “an effort to release more data to to public.”  Let’s hope they do more than just make an effort and actually release the data.

Just another sign how much global warming alarmists have been keeping us in the dark. (more…)

When I heard my gal* Carly explain how government regulation makes it difficult for entrepreneurs and employers to create new enterprises and expand existing businesses, I became increasingly enthusiastic about her run for the Senator.  Like the Gipper (and yours truly), she understands that government is not the solution to the problem, it is (more often than not) the problem.

Now,with this morning the Weekly Republican Address on health care, she’s done it again, relating his personal battle with breast cancer to the current national debate on health care:

She doesn’t have the Gipper’s fluency of delivery, but does get his basic view of government, particularly when she asks, “Will a bureaucrat determine that my life isn’t worth saving?”

All this takes on even greater urgency in the midst of the ongoing health care debate in Washington. We wonder if we are heading down a path where the federal government will at first suggest and then mandate new standards for prevention and treatment. Do we really want government bureaucrats rather than doctors dictating how we prevent and treat something like breast cancer?

Sounds a lot like Reagan’s address in 1964 when he warned against the belief that “a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

Carly goes on to point out how the Senate bill would empower government panels to do just that, plan our lives for us by dictating health care solutions from that “far-distant capital.”   (more…)

Wonder if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will ever take responsibility for her own mistakes.  The “so-called stimulus” isn’t creating the jobs she and her fellow Democrats promised so she vows to spend even more of our money on similar government schemes.

It’s like hiring a guy to do magic incantations to cure your recurrent headaches, then when his supposedly healing words don’t work and the headaches return with even greater force, tossing the Tylenol and renewing his contract.

Now, with the Democrats having been in charge for ten full months (and then some), after having promised us that should Congress pass that aforementioned “stimulus,” unemployment would peak at 8%, Mrs. Pelosi, wait for it, blames her party’s all-purpose bad a guy, a Mr. George W. Bush:

Though jobs numbers released this morning were better than expected, Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want anyone to forget that the economic crisis started under the Bush administration.

The Department of Labor estimated today that just 11,000 jobs were lost in November. . . . Pelosi took the opportunity to take a few shots at the last administration.

(H/t Gateway Pundit.)  Hey, Nancy, you know when that recession began, you’d been Speaker for nearly a full year.

Democrats had majorities in both houses of Congress.  Wonder then how your party’s victories impacted the economy.  And what you and your fellow partisans were doing to forestall an economic decline.

A number of our readers have e-mailed Bruce and me, asking for our commentary on the latest revelation about Kevin Jennings, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Safe and Drug-Free Schools.  As Michelle Malkin put it in introducing her post on the story,

Doing the investigative work the dinosaur, Obama-enabling media won’t do, Scott Baker and a collaborative research team have waded through the sexually explicit reading list endorsed by safe schools czar Kevin Jennings and the group he founded — GLSEN.

For the record, I had been in a communication with a representative of that team and have been aware of the story well before it hit the blogs.  They have done their homework, identifying numerous sexually explicit passages in a reading list Jennings helped design for children in Grades 7-12.

As I read those passages, I recalled the numerous gay novels I had read after I completed my own novel.  What struck me about most gay fiction was not only its self-pitying nature, but the poor writing, the lack of introspection and the absence of character development.  They all seemed to define their sexuality by its sexual expression.  Only a handful (notably the eloquent Jim Grimsley) wrote convincingly about non-sexual longing and emotional intimacy.  Most included gratuitous and graphic descriptions of sexual activity.

And the books on Jennings’ list were no different:

Book after book after book contained stories and anecdotes that weren’t merely X-rated and pornographic, but which featured explicit descriptions of sex acts between pre-schoolers; stories that seemed to promote and recommend child-adult sexual relationships; stories of public masturbation, anal sex in restrooms, affairs between students and teachers, five-year-olds playing sex games, semen flying through the air.

But, would I go as far as the authors of the report to say the books has less to do with “promoting tolerance” than they did with indoctrinating “students into a hyper-sexualized worldview”?  It may be, but I don’t know.  I haven’t read the passages in context of the books in which they appear.

Now, there is nothing wrong with sexual activity nor is there anything wrong to writing about it.  (I do, however, contend that it rarely enhances a work of literature.  If you don’t believe me, just go read some of the classics of Western literature (prior to James Joyce) and see how they writing about human sexuality, its complexity and its expression without describing the sex act.  But, this is a matter for another conversation and another post.)

Indeed, one could include a sexually explicit passage in a novel about developing a mature attitude toward sexuality.  One could show how a young gay man moves from expressing his sexuality in pure sexual terms, but evolves to understand the emotions behind the sexual attraction, that, in being drawn to a particular man’s body, he slowly begins to appreciate him for what lies beneath the skin.

Now, presenting that emotional journey may well make for a good novel, but is it appropriate to encourage for schoolchildren to read such descriptions?  Maybe for kids older than sixteen (tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades), but clearly not for students in Middle School (or their first year of high school in some states).

As we ask that question, let me pose another that the other conservative bloggers who have picked up the story have not considered:  is this the image of homosexuality we want to promote to adolescents struggling with sexual feelings of which they are just becoming aware? (more…)

Imagine, if you will, that in the wake of the passage last fall of Proposition 8 in California, a group of social conservatives thought it was time to reintroduce the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) in Congress.  As they did, they announced a national media campaign to promote the measure, encouraging supportive Senators and Representatives to return to their state and districts and hold townhalls to promote the proposed constitutional amendment.

As one particularly strong supporter of the amendment scheduled just such a meeting in his Missouri district, gay activists got wind of the meeting and starting rallying their supporters from the area to participate and ask tough questions.  Well, the Congressman’s supporters found out about these plans.  And to prevent them from “disrupting” the event, they called a local Christian mega-church, asking its powerful pastor to help out.  Specifically, they wanted him to dispatch his vaunted security team to the event and to alert his congregation to pack the auditorium.

Well, he did as he was asked.  On the day of the meeting, the security force stood at the main entrance, making sure no one got in that way until just before the program started.  The larger-than expected crowd milled about restlessly outside.  Meanwhile, churchgoers were quietly entering the hall through a side door.

Film crews arrive and start filming the largely gay crowd.  They have come prepared and are brandishing a great variety of signage promoting gay marriage and denouncing the proposed amendment.  Concerned now that while they have won the battle of the auditorium, they may lose the battle of the “narrative,” the evangelical security force tries to wrest some of the signs from the protesters.  An enterprising gay man walks down the line, selling rainbow flags.  He’s doing a brisk business.  Fearful that these flags will dominate the camera shot, a few of the burly evangelicals try to prevent him from distributing his wares to the growing multitude.

Defiantly, he continues to sell.  This upsets the evangelical thugs;  they rip the flags out of his hand and wrestle him to the ground, kicking him repeatedly.  Another activist captures this on his cell phone.  Soon, police arrive, pushing the Christian crusaders off the slight young man and helping him into an ambulance which whisks him away to a nearby hospital.

In such a scenario, don’t you think the media would have a field day, making a martyr of the slight young man and demanding swift justice for the burly evangelicals?  (They’d probably also demand an investigation and call on the Congressman to resign.) (more…)