illusory tenant

And then there is the really very Breitblart

2009-12-01T13:48:00.007-06:00

Charlie Sykes is really not very bright, is he

2009-12-01T12:18:00.036-06:00

Or else he is very bright and cynically panders to the collection of dim bulbs that comprise his discipleship. Local AM radio buffoon Charlie Sykes is troubled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's assertion that "the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited."

Except to the extent that health care has an effect on and is affected by commerce among the several States (which is a very large extent indeed), Pelosi's statement is right on the money, and she can claim several decades worth of U.S. Supreme Court decisions for support.

Try as Charlie Sykes might, he won't find any "limit" on that regulatory power mentioned in Art. I, Sec. 8 of the U.S. Constitution.

And guess who helped author one of the most recent of those decisions reaffirming the reach of the federal legislative branch's constitutionally enumerated power over interstate commerce? You are correct: Conservative hero and avatar Justice Antonin Scalia.

He said even if you were just growing a couple of weeds in your living room for personal, medicinal purposes, the feds could still come and throw your sorry keister in prison, on an interstate commerce theory.

So, yeah, essentially unlimited.

Incidentally, the otherwise highly commendable link aggregator WisOpinion.com counts Charlie Sykes's one- and two-sentence gibberishes among its "Featured Blogs." Nobody really knows why.

This ridiculous clown but not, for example, the fabulous Jill Sixpack.

Fortunately we can (and do) know better.

GOP priorities, a demonstration

2009-12-01T11:15:00.036-06:00

The Washington Moonie Times has an article about several of Obama's judicial nominees, which for some inexplicable reason includes a photo of Michael Gableman, who a three-judge panel unanimously found last month to have willfully violated* two separate provisions of the Wisconsin code of judicial conduct.

Now it seems a number of conservative Republicans in the U.S. Congress have expressed concerns over our former State Supreme Court Justice Louis B. Butler, Jr., who was a judge for 16 years but during which time was never once found by anybody to have violated any provisions of the Wisconsin code of judicial conduct.

Many thanks again, Republicans, for insulting our intelligence, and not least for characterizing the "antipathy toward Christianity" of Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Judge David F. Hamilton, whose father is a retired United Methodist minister in Indianapolis.

You all are truly scientific political geniuses.

Earlier: Jeff Sessions, defender of the Constitution.

* He may or may not be in the process of escaping responsibility through — ironically — a loophole. It yet remains to be seen.

Mike Huckabee is 100% pro-criminal

2009-12-01T08:05:00.041-06:00

On his radio show today, Huckabee again addressed the slayings of four police officers,* placing blame both with his own State's system and the government of Washington.

Sure, blame everybody else. However, if the justice system sentenced Maurice Clemmons to 97 years and you released him after 11, then I'm not sure how you get to implicate the justice system.

Because it sounds to me like the justice system got this one right.

Judge Marion Humphrey, Pulaski County, Arkansas:
We're a country that says we believe in mercy. This is the Advent season. And one of the things about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is that He promoted mercy. And that is a part of the makeup of some of us who serve on the benches, who serve on parole boards, who serve in governors' offices.

Of course. It also explains why U.S. prisons are jammed with non-violent drug offenders and why simple possession (sans any intent to sell) of eight grams of marijuana is a felony. Moreover, 'It shows he is a conservative with compassion,' as some approving observers are saying of Mike Huckabee's parole decisions.

If Huckabee's presidential aspirations are in tatters, he could always move to Ozaukee County and take a run at the State Supreme Court. He should get a lot of support from Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce. They were always big on the "pro-criminal" angle.

* BurnabyDude wrote:
The suspect was armed and dangerous + he didn't stop on command. As far as I see it, just dessert — and good riddance too. No chance of being commuted by an opportunist governor or being paroled by some idiotic board.

Typical bleeding heart, left-coast socialist Canadian.

Birthers creationists climate deniers oh my

2009-11-30T22:50:00.006-06:00

Little Green Footballs, under the Palin bus you go.

h/t Mike Mathias.

McIlheran embarrassment continues

2009-11-30T14:21:00.019-06:00

No, no one can double-check the alarmists' data. They threw it out. Their work cannot be checked by others. — P. McIlheran

Too bad it ain't true (a.k.a., old news).

Does P. McIlheran actually get paid for this utter credulity?

Fortunately for the intrepid scientific expert P. McIlheran, all of his data is already collected in one place: the nut-right blogosphere.

Follow the logic

2009-11-30T14:00:00.007-06:00

This sportswriter argues that the integrity of a breakfast cereal is compromised because Tiger Woods won't explain why he ran his car into a fire hydrant. I'm always looking for excuses why I made triple bogey. Which golf clubs did Tiger Woods endorse so I can get some.

eta: Pat O'Brien of "Access Hollywood" was just on Wolf Blitzer's "Situation Room" comparing Tiger Woods to ... Michael Vick.

By whose authority?

2009-11-30T10:40:00.017-06:00

DATE: November 2009
TO: Lawyers admitted to the State Bar of Wisconsin in Odd-Numbered Years
RE: Wisconsin Mandatory Continuing Legal Education Requirements

7. Enter in the EPR [ethics and professional responsibility] Hours Attended.

By his authority? Why in the world should I be required to comply with the Supreme Court Rules when a member of the Supreme Court can't?

And if I fail to so comply, do you believe a panel of referees will recommend the complaint against me be dismissed? Not bloody likely.

JSOnline comments policy

2009-11-30T10:16:00.008-06:00

We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!

— Colonel Kurtz

I'm not much of a cook

2009-11-30T09:45:00.004-06:00

But "simmer" doesn't mean "increasing heat," does it?

Says science-misconduct expert Nicholas Steneck of the University of Michigan, "I believe what the CRU e-mails will show when carefully studied is a group of professionals struggling with the (climate) dilemma."

You have to read through 18 paragraphs to get to that truth.

Great work, journalists

2009-11-29T21:51:00.025-06:00

"Climategate," it's a terrible, terrible scandal, don't you know:

This weekend it emerged that the [CRU] has thrown away much of the data. Tucked away on its website is this statement: "Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some [foreign measurement station] sites ... We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (ie, quality controlled and homogenised) data."

If true, it is extraordinary.

Reports the Times of London breathlessly.

Needless to say, the nut-right has gone bananas, and inferred that because the CRU didn't store all data, then all data no longer exists.

In fact the raw data is all over the internets, among other places.

eta: Even Andrew Sullivan managed to sniff it out.

Help, help, I'm being repressed

2009-11-29T20:32:00.011-06:00

With all this talk of "attempts to suppress dissenting scientists’ research and other questionable data fabrication,"* now is a good time to recall the "Sternberg peer review controversy":

The paper by Stephen C. Meyer,** "The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories," in vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239 of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, was published at the discretion of the former editor, Richard V. Sternberg. Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history.

Sternberg pulled a Dick Cheney:

As managing editor it was my prerogative to choose the editor who would work directly on the paper, and as I was best qualified among the editors I chose myself.

Finally:

A film released in April 2008 featuring Ben Stein, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, discusses the Sternberg controversy, but misrepresents several key facts.

You don't say. Ben Stein & Co. probably thought that misrepresenting misrepresentations would make them true.

Wikipedia: Sternberg peer review controversy.

* Mr. Jim Ott (R-Mequon) needs to support this accusation.
** I have an e-mail from Stephen Meyer dated 1905.

So who's hiding the climate data

2009-11-29T09:44:00.020-06:00

Not the AGW proponents:

Svensmark has never tried to defend himself properly, i.e., by a peer reviewed reply article, against these serious charges. Friis‐Christensen once tried to defend himself against the criticism of the 1991 Science article. However, the apparent rebuttal in his reply article was only achieved by introducing two simple arithmetic errors, which were well hidden in the article and quite difficult to spot. The two arithmetic errors artificially created an agreement of the new observational data with the values of the 1991 article. Applying correct arithmetic, the support of the solar theory totally vanishes.

Peter Laut (.pdf; 6 pgs.) via RealClimate.

D'you think our local denialist will make note of that? Me neither.

Mr. McIlheran's latest missive on the subject, incidentally, is characteristically uninformed and credulous. Beneath the headline, Climate 'science' was rigged from the start, the local paper's "right-wing guy" and ace environmental reporter finds soothing words at the Wall Street Journal and endorses the red herring of a Detroit News editorialist who declares: "Science should never be settled."

Obviously, all scientists knows this, and concur. It's a question of degree: some science is "more settled" than other. Yet there are still Young Earth Creationists and people who believe diseases are caused by Hell-dwelling pixies. Likewise, there is still Patrick McIlheran.

Pro golfer seeks publicist

2009-11-28T23:30:00.004-06:00

New York night club hostess Rachel Uchitel has hired high-profile attorney Gloria Allred to represent her.

Must be available to start yesterday.

The WaPo finds these claims irresponsible

2009-11-28T10:09:00.006-06:00

But it keeps on publishing them nevertheless.

Darn that librul media anyway.

Palin cheated at Scrabble™

2009-11-27T22:26:00.002-06:00

There is only one K and one Q.

hoard n : a hidden accumulation

See you in Hell

2009-11-27T19:33:00.019-06:00

If Kennedy [D-RI 1st] wants to disregard the laws of the Church, that's his business, but there are consequences. If he is not a believer ... as you appear not to be ... Heaven* is not in the cards. Simple as that. That's the way it is.

God's love sure is harsh.

Via Plaisted Writes.**

* Not capitalized in original, which I am given to understand is itself an unforgivable blasphemy. (Hell is getting mighty crowded.)
** Next year I think Frogwater and John Sieger should open for us.

Gore says "millions" instead of "thousands"

2009-11-27T15:51:00.026-06:00

Points out the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's associate editorial page editor. If the significance of Al Gore's recent Tonight Show "gaffe" escapes you, then welcome to the club. Now were the temperatures within the Earth's mantle actually lower than they are on its surface, then perhaps Mr. Ulrich-Franzen would be on to something.

Maybe the Journal-Sentinel's editorial board will next adjust its withering glare toward Rush Limbaugh's allegations of "substantial fraud" on the part of climate scientists, as Limbaugh's stature as a demagogue in the public imagination is roughly commensurate with that of Al Gore's, and allegations of substantial fraud are considerably more serious than an apparent slip of the tongue.

But I wouldn't hold my CO₂.

Suit alleges inappropriate truth-telling

2009-11-26T21:46:00.016-06:00

A right-wing Washington D.C. "think tank"* wants to sue NASA scientist Gavin A. Schmidt for his Herculean undertakings at the website RealClimate.org:

Yes they’re planning to sue Schmidt for the "inappropriate behavior" of moderating comments at RealClimate. Of course, the point of this vexatious suit isn’t to win — it’s to harass and distract Schmidt because he is being effective.

Very, very effective.

This is a remarkable and fascinating story, and one has been able to witness, over the course of just a couple of days, the construction of a right-wing meme based entirely on falsehoods and ignorance.

Schmidt has been virtually instrumental in correcting the factual record and enlightening the ignorant. And now they want to punish him with a lawsuit: for telling the truth. Think-tank about that.

Read: Every factual assertion by the CEI fellow is false

* Whose benefactors include Milwaukee's own Bradley Foundation.

Timing of "climategate" not at all suspicious

2009-11-26T11:39:00.010-06:00

Copenhagen Diagnosis Executive Summary

Question: Does the (alleged) fact that Penn State's Michael E. Mann is a bit of a dick invalidate the laws of physics? Or confirm them?

Fraud, yes, but denialist fraud

2009-11-25T08:01:00.014-06:00

Further to this "Climategate" nonsense:

One of the e-mails is quite explicit:
I think the scientific fraud committed by Douglass needs to be exposed. His co-authors may be innocent bystanders, but I doubt it.
Fraud? Right there in front of everyone? In the climate debate?

In the end, the scientists in the discussion determined not to hold a press conference to announce a finding of fraud, but instead to hunker down and work on publishing datasets that would contradict the alleged fraudulent paper, and establish their case with data instead of invective and press conferences.

Not even a Tea Party.

Read: Smoking guns in the CRU e-mails.

Earlier: Lord McIlheran, Maven of Science.

"It sure looks like trying to fool the rubes — that is, us."

McIlheran's self-description is accurate, if nothing else.

Hitler, Stalin fingered in climate conspiracy

2009-11-24T21:33:00.027-06:00

Steven J. Dubner, co-author of SuperFreakonomics, lent credence to the fevered "ClimateGate" ravings of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), and other global warming deniers in an interview with Fox Business Network host David Asman, after Asman compared climate scientists to Stalin and Hitler.

"Stalin ... and of course, Hitler," he says. Haha. Fox.

Watch it.

Say what, Dubner thinks the scientists he's accusing of distorting evidence don't take methane into consideration?

As a matter of fact, a legitimate and reasonable criticism is that they take methane too much into consideration and to the extent that climate projections include for a certain volume of methane that never materialized, those projections would be inaccurate.

So Dubner is telling climate scientists, who he's accused of distorting evidence, and who are already well aware of the effects of methane, that they should be paying more attention to methane, and not CO2, even though there has been approaching a zero increase in the amount of methane in the atmosphere over the last decade or so.

And for those reasons, it's fair to criticize some climate projections. That is, criticisms all based on the exact opposite of what Steven J. Dubner is claiming. You can't help except wonder ... does Dubner even know what it is in the tarnation that he is talking about?

Wild hyperbole of the day

2009-11-24T20:17:00.032-06:00

For sheer, homegrown genocide, consider this. Over the last 40 years, a period of time that coincides with black wholesale capitulation to the Democrat [sic] Party, black people, with the help of white liberals,* have managed to do what the Ku Klux Klan in their WILDEST DREAMS! could never do. Legally kill 16 million Americans of African descent.

— Journal Broadcast Group radio "personality" James T. Harris

Or: consider looking in the dictionary under 'genocide.' You'd expect the tinfoil hat routine from a caller, but this guy has his own show.

And I know Harris — being a Biblical creationist — is unable to buy the evidence, but all Americans are ultimately of African descent.

* I'm looking at you, Leonard Bernstein and Sandra Day O'Connor.

"Scandal" upgraded to "satire"

2009-11-24T15:37:00.013-06:00

OK Sen. Inhofe demands probe into smart-alecky scientists

However, it [was] not immediately clear what Inhofe hopes to accomplish with his proposed hearing.

Laughs, what else.

Direct marketing the Palin readership

2009-11-24T12:59:00.002-06:00

They're the ones who can't even spell the title.

You and your some kind of elite Ivy League education.