Combs Spouts Off

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Archive for June, 2012

The power to tax and broccoli

Posted by Richard on June 28, 2012

During oral arguments on Obamacare, Justice Alito asked if the federal government can force us to buy broccoli. In today’s ruling, Chief Justice Roberts has answered that question: No, but it can force us to pay a penalty “tax” for failing to buy broccoli.

So, although the Commerce Clause doesn’t quite give the federal government unlimited power, it effectively has unlimited power anyway.

So says what passes for a conservative justice.

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Obamacare upheld 5-4, Roberts joins statists

Posted by Richard on June 28, 2012

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, basically arguing, “We can’t stretch the Commerce Clause far enough to justify the individual mandate, but the penalty is sort of like a tax, so let’s just call it a tax. And everyone knows that the government can do whatever it wants with regard to taxes. Oh, but Congress said it’s not  a tax … so I guess it’s not really a tax, and the Anti-Injunction Act doesn’t apply.”

Based on such nonsense, the entire monstrosity survives. Because of this unprincipled “mainstream conservative” weasel. Disgusting.

Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito joined in a dissenting opinion, and Thomas also filed his own dissenting opinion. I look forward to reading that one.

Bill Wilson of Americans for Limited Government:

The U.S. Constitution died today.  The underlying hope and belief that our nation’s founding document protected individual freedoms from an ever encroaching government is a thing of the past based upon this ruling.  It is inconceivable how these nine lifetime appointed jurists could have decided to keep a law that is such a blatant intrusion into each of our lives, but the result of their decision is that individuals can no longer rely on the federal government power being limited by anything other than the political pressure their individual elected representatives feel.  Ultimately, the Supreme Court has opted out of the battle to retain our freedoms, and has thrown in entirely with those who advocated for unlimited government authority.  It is truly a sad day for our nation.

Indeed.

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When straws are outlawed…

Posted by Richard on June 27, 2012

Every time I think I’ve encountered the ultimate example of  “zero tolerance” policies run amok, it later turns out I was mistaken. It’s happened again.

The Supreme Court has refused to hear Mikel v. School Board. That means Andrew Mikel II will continue to have on his record a full year school suspension and a juvenile court sentence to a diversion program for anger management and substance abuse counseling. For shooting spitwads at classmates during lunch period.

Mikel was 14 and an honor student active in Junior ROTC when he committed this heinous act in December, 2010. Spotsylvania High School in Spotsylvania, PA, called it “criminal assault and possession of a weapon,” and referred it to local law enforcement, which initiated juvenile criminal proceedings.

Mikel has been homeschooled since.

The Rutherford Institute fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court (emphasis added):

“There can be no justice in a nation where young people like Andrew Mikel have their futures senselessly derailed by school administrators lacking in both common sense and compassion,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “That the Supreme Court refused to hear Andrew’s case is a tragedy in itself, but by failing to intervene, the Court is legitimizing the perverse use of zero tolerance policies by school districts and the criminalization of America’s schoolchildren by teachers, administrators and police.”

Decrying the school’s actions as arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion, attorneys for The Rutherford Institute filed a petition with the Circuit Court of the County of Spotsylvania asking the court to overturn the School Board’s decision. Although the Circuit Court ruled in favor of the school, it did acknowledge that it was “incongruous” that Andrew was suspended for the remainder of the year for spitwads while a student who punched someone in the eye could be suspended for only ten days. 

Ah, but the student who punched someone in the eye wasn’t armed with an illegal weapon — a straw and some hollow plastic “spitwad” pellets.

I have some questions for Spotsylvania school officials, police, and the courts through which this farce proceeded:

  • Is a straw automatically a weapon, or only if it’s “loaded” with a pellet?
  • What if the straw’s “unloaded,” but the student has the “ammo” elsewhere on his person?
  • Is it a worse offense if he’s carrying the straw concealed?
  • What’s going to be declared a weapon next — a rubber band? A spork?
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The outrageous persecution of the Reese family

Posted by Richard on June 24, 2012

In the suddenly newsworthy Operation Fast and Furious, federal law enforcement agents pressured gun dealers into selling over 2,000 guns to straw purchasers and then let the guns “walk” into the hands of the Mexican narcoterrorist cartels. BATFE Phoenix Bureau Chief Bill Newell oversaw the operation. What’s he been doing since?

Well, for one thing, he’s been helping the Homeland Security Investigations agency prosecute — no, persecute — Rick and Terri Reese and their sons, Ryin and Remington. The Reeses own a gun store in Deming, NM. They’re accused of selling 30 guns to straw purchasers.

But here’s where it starts to get outrageous: The case began when Terri Reese alerted law enforcement that she was suspicious of one of their customers, Penny Torres. Torres was arrested and persuaded, presumably with a promise of leniency, to testify against the Reeses!

And then it gets more outrageous: The Reeses were denied bail because the feds argued that they might precipitate a Ruby-Ridge-like incident. You see, the feds found guns in their home and business (imagine that, gun dealers with guns). And they’re involved with a local Tea Party group — clear proof that they’re dangerous anti-government extremists. In March, Terri Reese was finally granted bail after six months in jail. But her husband and sons are still imprisoned.

It gets still more outrageous. Read Jeff Knox’s account of the whole sordid story. It’s not the Reeses who should be in jail.

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Zombyboy is back

Posted by Richard on June 24, 2012

On Friday, the first new post in more than a year appeared on ResurrectionSong. It was Zombyboy announcing his new site, PolicyZ. Because he wanted to “do exactly the same thing somewhere else.”

Check it out, it’s a slick-looking site (very different from ResurrectionSong), and judging from the first few posts, he is doing the same thing: writing good posts about lots of different interesting stuff. Highly recommended.

Jed (via email; he’s still on hiatus) is already pushing for a celebratory Blogger Bash — in this case a Zomby Bash. Stay tuned.

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More doctoring by NBC/MSNBC

Posted by Richard on June 19, 2012

The NBC “news” organization, which doctored the tape of the George Zimmerman 911 call to make him appear to be a racist, has done it again. This time, they doctored video of Mitt Romney to make him appear to be out of touch with the ordinary, day-to-day experiences of average Americans like ordering a sandwich at a sub shop.

It was a blatant attempt to reprise the Bush supermarket scanner story (which was declared false by Snopes, by the way), and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell explicitly compared it to that incident.

In fact, Romney was simply comparing how private businesses, thanks to competition and innovation, make things easier and easier for their customers while the federal government makes things harder and harder. So he contrasted the ease of ordering a sub from a touch-screen with the difficulty an optometrist faced when trying to change his address (a 32-page form!) and get paid money the federal government owed him (a multi-month process). You can see the whole segment at NewsBusters (link above).

But you’d never know any of that context from seeing the carefully edited MSNBC clip. Or the slightly longer clip (still omitting all the context, and also at Newsbusters link above) that Mitchell showed in response to criticism.

Expect more of this between now and November. Much more. Especially from NBC/MSNBC, but from other MSM outlets also. They’re totally in the tank for Obama and willing to do virtually anything to manipulate public opinion on his behalf.

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Saudi clerics combat Islamist extremism — sort of

Posted by Richard on June 16, 2012

Steven Miller of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies posted some interesting information from a 2011 study the foundation commissioned to collect and analyze what Saudi clerics are saying online. It’s at best a mixed bag.

To a large extent, the campaign to undercut al Qaeda in Saudi religious discourse appears to have worked, according to the FDD study. Calls for violence accounted for just a small portion of the total content of the social media data — only 5 percent.

You knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you?

But apparent success of the Saudi campaign, as suggested by the data above, obfuscates a key point: the clerics do not condemn jihad per se, just al Qaeda’s jihad.

The Grand Mufti, highest Saudi religious authority, teaches that individuals should wage jihad against the infidels only when told to do so by the royal family. Other clerics still teach that “jihad means fighting the infidels” (not some self-improvement quest, as the propagandists at CAIR and their sympathizers claim) “until they become Muslim or agree to live under Muslim protection,” and that waging jihad or supporting those who do so is the duty of Muslims.

The bottom line:

The data from the FDD study suggests that the Saudi government’s efforts to restrict or reduce the amount of militant online content have been somewhat effective. This indicates that when the Saudis are sufficiently motivated, they can temper the radicalism that has long percolated in the kingdom. But the data also shows that the Saudi campaign has not been able to eliminate radicalism, even, and perhaps most significantly, at the highest levels of the Saudi religious establishment.

For some reason, I’m not surprised.

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“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” silver anniversary

Posted by Richard on June 12, 2012

Twenty-five years ago today, President Reagan stood at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and gave one of the most important speeches of the 20th century. If you’re too young to remember the world before the fall of the Soviet Union, know this: for the four decades before Reagan called on Gorbachev to open that gate and tear down that wall, East German border guards had been shooting down men, women, and children trying to escape from the gigantic prison camp known as the Soviet empire. Little more than two years later, the wall came down and what Reagan called the Evil Empire fell.

The speech is a beautiful, stirring thing delivered with strength and conviction. I still get chills listening to it. I urge you youngsters who’ve never heard it and you oldsters who’ve forgotten it to listen to it in its entirety (26 minutes). Here’s the complete video and an excerpt from the transcript (PDF available here).


[YouTube link]

Our gathering today is being broadcast throughout Western Europe and North America. I understand that it is being seen and heard as well in the East. To those listening throughout Eastern Europe, a special word: Although I cannot be with you, I address my remarks to you just as surely as to those standing here before me. For I join you, as I join your fellow countrymen in the West, in this firm, this unalterable belief: Es gibt nur ein Berlin. [There is only one Berlin.]

Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same–still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state. Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar.

In West Germany and here in Berlin, there took place an economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder. Adenauer, Erhard, Reuter, and other leaders understood the practical importance of liberty–that just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom. The German leaders reduced tariffs, expanded free trade, lowered taxes. From 1950 to 1960 alone, the standard of living in West Germany and Berlin doubled.

In the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted: “We will bury you.” But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind–too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control.

Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

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About that High Park fire

Posted by Richard on June 12, 2012

The High Park fire in the mountainous regions west of Fort Collins, CO, actually began with a lightning strike last Wednesday, according to the experts. But it smoldered unnoticed until Saturday morning when increasing winds caused it to flare up and be noticed. At that time, it covered 2 acres.

By late Saturday afternoon, it had burned an estimated 5,000 acres. Some climbers on the summit of Longs Peak recorded this video of the smoke plume (along with a nice shot of a marmot):


[YouTube link]

By Sunday evening, the fire had consumed 20,000 acres. As of early Monday evening, it was 41,000+ acres, the third-largest fire in recorded Colorado history. Over 2,000 residences have been evacuated, one resident is believed dead, and over 120 structures are known to have been destroyed. In a poignant moment described by Gov. John Hickenlooper, firefighters trying to protect the historic Prairie Stove School in the path of the flames looked up the hill to see their own homes being consumed by the flames.

So how did this fire grow so incredibly fast? The news media, the governor, and the experts talked mostly about the dry spring, low humidity, and high winds. Those are certainly major factors. As usual, some people will blame “climate change.” But I think there are two other major culprits: insects and environmentalists. The former are mentioned in passing, the latter are never mentioned.

The pine bark beetle began invading and killing Colorado’s lodgepole pine forests back in the 1990s. By 2008, it was estimated to have infested 1.5 million acres, including the portions of Larimer County west of Fort Collins that were hit by two smaller fires (5-6,000 acres) earlier this spring and are now being devastated by the High Park fire. By last fall, the estimate was up to 3 million acres.

Since early in the beetle epidemic, logging companies have offered proposals to cut dead and infested trees in order to limit spread of the beetle and reduce the risk of massive dead-tree-fueled wildfires. They’ve had some limited success in getting permission for such cutting, but have been opposed by environmentalists every step of the way. The environmental groups insist that letting the beetles kill the trees is natural, letting the dead trees stand is natural, but letting human beings cut them down, remove them, and turn them into construction lumber or pellet stove fuel is unnatural. To radical environmentalists, anything that non-humans do is natural and anything that humans do is unnatural — to them, we humans are, unlike all other living creatures, not a part of nature.

My heart goes out to those who’ve lost their homes and to the family of apparent victim Linda Steadman. But although it may sound cruel, I have to say to those residents of the area who were members of Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, and similar groups: You helped bring this onto yourselves. You chose to value pine bark beetles and the “naturalness” of dead trees more than the needs of humans. You have reaped what you have sown.

There are millions more acres of dead lodgepole pines in Colorado. Many more of those acres will, IMHO, go up in flames in the future. Because radical environmentalists have prevented them from being harvested.

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Obamacare pace car

Posted by Richard on June 9, 2012

Pretty funny picture. Most of the caption suggestions are pretty lame, but I like this one:

Is this one of those “Cadillac” health plans we keep hearing about?

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Obama’s “Let them eat cake” moment

Posted by Richard on June 8, 2012

The President held a press conference today, and he didn’t do himself any favors re-election-wise. In an incredibly clueless answer to a question about the economy, he argued that “the private sector is doing fine” and the only problem with our economy is that the government sector isn’t big enough. Here’s the key minute:


[YouTube link]

He again called on the Republicans to pass his “Jobs Act,” which he said would create a million new jobs for construction workers, policemen, firemen, and teachers — in other words, more government workers and more workers on government construction projects — and he lamented that fact that governors and mayors weren’t doing enough hiring.

Plenty of Republicans have responded forcefully to this nonsense, including Governors Christie, Jindal, and Walker. I especially liked Jindal’s pithy observation that the Obama administration is “at the nexus of liberalism and incompetence,” and Scott Walker’s summation of the difference between the Socialist Democrats and the rest of us:

“There are two very different views in the country,” Walker said. “The current administration seems to think that success is measured by how many people are dependent on the government. I think success is measured by how many are not.”

To me, there’s a certain irony to Obama’s recent remarks on the economy. In addition to an insufficiently large government sector, he blames our economic problems on the problems of Europe. But this is the man whose quest to “fundamentally transform” America is a quest to make us more like Europe, with its abundantly large government sector. A lot of good that’s done them.

Well, at least the finger-pointing at governors, mayors, and Europe has led to less “blame Bush” rhetoric.

UPDATE: Ever since I heard the President say “the private sector is doing fine,” something in the back of my mind has been bugging me about that statement, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Finally, it came to me — this isn’t the first time I’ve heard almost exactly that phrase. It was last October that Senator Harry Reid (SD-NV) said:

“It’s very clear that private sector jobs have been doing just fine.  It’s public sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers.”

I’ve got the whole story here.

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Walker wins!

Posted by Richard on June 5, 2012

Much earlier than I had expected (less than 2 hours after the polls closed), Fox News projected that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker had survived his recall election. NBC,  CBS, and CNN soon followed. This is a tremendous victory for the Tea Party movement and a crushing defeat for organized labor and the Socialist Democrats.

Apparently, according to Fox News, earlier projections that the vote would be incredibly close were based on exit polling, and when the vote totals started coming it, it soon became clear that there was a significant difference between the actual votes and what the exit polls predicted. In other words, either many of the people being exit-polled lied, or (much more likely) the exit polling didn’t question a representative sample.

I’m thrilled, but cautiously so. With 55% reporting, Walker leads 57-42. That’s bound to tighten as more of Madison and Milwaukee come in. So I just hope Walker’s margin of victory ends up being big enough to avoid a recount or challenge. Because you know if it’s close, challenger Tom Barrett and the unions will try to pull an Al Franken.

UPDATE: Here’s the biggest laugh of the night. David Axelrod looked at the Obama-Romney numbers from the Wisconsin exit polls and tweeted that “WI raises big questions for Mitt” — shortly before the actual vote totals completely discredited the exit polls.

Axelrod must have also fashioned the Obama campaign’s response. According to Politico, they’re claiming that a “strong message” was sent to Walker. As Joshua Sharf tweeted, these are the folks who said a “strong majority” passed Obamacare. “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”

UPDATE 2: According to the AP, with 97% of precincts reporting, it’s Walker 53%, Barrett 46%. So Walker’s margin of victory tonight is greater than the 5% margin he had in 2010. Woohoo! Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch also beat the recall with 53%.

Oh, and as for the four Republican state senators facing recall — they all won, with 55-61% of the vote.

Does it get any better than this?

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Researchers discover climate change skeptics aren’t ignorant

Posted by Richard on June 4, 2012

Everyone knows — at least among the liberal elite — that the people who question or reject the “settled science” of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) are ignorant yahoos, right? Well, no. Not according to Yale University researchers who examined the “science literacy” and “numeracy” of climate change skeptics and true believers. It turns out that climate change skeptics are pretty scientifically literate and able to understand quantitative information.

The published information doesn’t reveal just how skeptics and true believers compare in their knowledge of science and ability to reason with numbers (a telling omission), but it’s clear that the results don’t conform to the prejudices of the cognoscenti. And the statements of one of the researchers suggest that (oh, the horror!) the skeptics may be more scientifically literate than the true believers (emphasis added):

“The aim of the study was to test two hypotheses,” said Dan Kahan, Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology at Yale Law School and a member of the study team. “The first attributes political controversy over climate change to the public’s limited ability to comprehend science, and the second, to opposing sets of cultural values. The findings supported the second hypothesis and not the first,” he said.

… The results of the study were consistent with previous studies that show that individuals with more egalitarian values disagree sharply with individuals who have more individualistic ones on the risks associated with nuclear power, gun possession, and the HPV vaccine for school girls.

“In effect,” Kahan said, “ordinary members of the public credit or dismiss scientific information on disputed issues based on whether the information strengthens or weakens their ties to others who share their values. At least among ordinary members of the public, individuals with higher science comprehension are even better at fitting the evidence to their group commitments.”

So does the same reasoning apply to the scientists who’ve created the “consensus” about AGW — could they also be “fitting the evidence to their group commitments”? Could that explain the faking of the hockey stick and the fudging of data revealed in the leaked Hadley CRU emails? Of course not:

Kahan said that the study supports no inferences about the reasoning of scientific experts in climate change.

As for us “ordinary members of the public,” the “consensus” scientists have an explanation for our troubling insistence on doubting the “scientific consensus” despite our scientific literacy and numeracy (emphasis added):

Researcher Ellen Peters of Ohio State University said that people who are higher in numeracy and science literacy usually make better decisions in complex technical situations, but the study clearly casts doubt on the notion that the more you understand science and math, the better decisions you’ll make in complex and technical situations. “What this study shows is that people with high science and math comprehension can think their way to conclusions that are better for them as individuals but are not necessarily better for society.”

So if you’re scientifically literate and numerate and you accept the “consensus” view of AGW, it’s because that’s what’s best for society. But if you’re scientifically literate and numerate and you reject the “consensus” view of AGW, it’s because you’re a selfish bastard.

Glad we got that straightened out. I thought I was just an ignorant yahoo.

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