Mass Destruction of Science: Charles Battig

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/02/mass_destruction_of_science.html Perhaps given the chance to avert public eyes from his lackluster results with containing the deteriorating situation in Syria, nuclear talks with Iran, and the Middle East peace process, Secretary of State Kerry has chosen to flaunt his lack of scientific understanding as a needed diversion.   Kerry described those who do not accept […]

EILEEN TOPLANSKY: A DESTRUCTIVE PRESIDENT

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2014/02/a_destructive_president.html President Barack Obama never admits to a mistake. Instead, egregious lawlessness is fluffed away as “not a smidgen of scandal” in relation to the IRS targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups. Instead of being a great leader, Obama distances himself and lets his appointees hide behind the law or simply exempt themselves […]

THE SHAME OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: HONORING RICHARD FALK-SOHRAB AHMARI

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304315004579383122747873010?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLESecond A 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist who Also Blames Jews for the Boston Marathon Attacks No matter how deep into the political fever swamps some scholars wade, it seems, progressive academe won’t shun them. Consider Richard Falk, a retired international-law professor whose tenure as the United Nations Human Rights Council’s rapporteur on the Palestinian territories has […]

BRET STEPHENS: CLIMATE PROPHETS AND PROFITEERS

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304675504579389492229581738?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The weirdest thing about John Kerry’s weekend speech on

climate-change—other than the fact that this is the same guy who in 1997 voted

to forbid the U.S. from signing the Kyoto Protocol—is that it begins by quoting

something Maurice Strong said at the U.N.’s 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro:

“Every bit of evidence I’ve seen persuades me that we are on a course leading to

tragedy.”

Maurice who?

Mr. Strong, a former oil executive from Canada (he was Pierre Trudeau’s

pick to run state-owned Petro-Canada in the mid-1970s), was for many years the

U.N.’s ultimate mandarin. He organized many of its environmental mega-confabs,

including the 1972 Stockholm Conference and the 1992 Rio summit, before rising

to become Kofi Annan’s right-hand man. At various times Mr. Strong has served as

director at the World Economic Forum, chairman of the Earth Council and the

World Resources Institute, vice chairman of the Chicago Climate Exchange and

chairman of the China Carbon Corporation, to name just a few of his many

prominent affiliations.

In 2005 it emerged that Mr. Strong, who was the chairman of the U.N.

panel that created the Office of the Iraq Program, had accepted a check for

close to $1 million from a South Korean businessman named Tongsun Park, who in

the 1970s had been involved in an effort to bribe U.S. politicians. Mr. Strong

claimed that the check, from a Jordanian bank, was meant as an investment in a

family company that later went bankrupt. Mr. Park (who also sublet office space

from Mr. Strong) later went to prison for trying to bribe U.N. officials

overseeing the Oil-for-Food program that was propping up Saddam Hussein’s regime

in Iraq. Mr. Strong was accused of no wrongdoing and has denied involvement in

Oil-for-Food. He left the U.N. that year and moved to

Beijing.

DANIEL GREENFIELD: OUR STATE OF POLICE

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
America does not have a police state. Yet. East Germany had a police state. Syria has a police state. In police states, the government is afraid of the people. Our government is not all that afraid of us. Despite the liberal paranoia about militias and assault rifles, the training drills and TV shows where survivalists overrun the country, the people in charge don’t wake up every morning worrying about a revolution. If they did, then two people in your neighborhood would be informing on you weekly.

We don’t have militarized police forces, TSA agents and NSA eavesdropping because the government is afraid of us, but because the government’s policies have made life unlivable without them. The KGB wasn’t there to protect Russians from each other. Our police state is. And those parts of it that aren’t fly under the radar every time the Chicago death toll for the year appears on the evening news.

The police escalation that shows up on countless videos exists because the people demanded it. And the people demanded it because liberal social policies made entire cities unlivable. The militarized police forces out of cities like Los Angeles filtered down to the suburbs and the rural areas as the same policies and populations that made cities unlivable began spreading outward.

MICHAEL MUKASEY: WHAT HOLDER IS NOT SAYING ABOUT LETTING FELONS VOTE

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304315004579383002400688612?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

There is a worthwhile debate to be had over whether state laws that disenfranchise felons should be changed or even eliminated. There can be an interesting discussion of how the history of such laws affects that debate. But you would not have known that from Eric Holder’s treatment of the subject in a Feb. 10 speech at the Georgetown Law Center in Washington.

The U.S. attorney general told us that statistics can be read to show that felon disenfranchisement laws actually promote recidivism. He said that such laws, which vary from state to state, are rooted in outdated notions going back to colonial days (when no one did any voting). He said that they were used during Reconstruction intentionally, and have been used since (whether intentionally or not is left hanging in the air) to deny the vote to blacks—who make up a larger percentage of those convicted of felonies than they do of the general population.

The statistical argument derives from a recent study in Florida that showed a lower recidivism rate for felons whose right to vote had been restored than for those whose right hadn’t. However, there is more going on here.

Florida has had, and indeed has broadened, a system that requires felons to go through an application process before their voting rights are restored. Obviously, those who are motivated to navigate such a process self-select as a group less likely to repeat their crimes. Suggesting that the automatic restoration of voting rights to all felons would lower recidivism is rather like suggesting that we can raise the incomes of all college students if we automatically grant them a college degree—because statistics show that people with college degrees have higher incomes than those without them.

The history suggested by the attorney general is just as deeply flawed. A clue to the flaw lies in his failure to call for a federal law barring state felon disenfranchisement statutes. Why would an administration given to bold legislative action at the federal level—given to bold action even without legislation—shrink from calling for such action here?

DEROY MURDOCK: THE UNITED STATES OF DECLINE

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/371248/print

America is unraveling at a stunning speed and to a staggering degree. This decline is breathtaking, and the prognosis is dim.

For starters, Obama now rules by decree. Reportedly for the 27th time, he has changed the rules of Obamacare singlehandedly, with neither congressional approval nor even ceremonial resolutions to limit his actions. Obama needs no such frivolities.

“That’s the good thing about being president,” Obama joked on February 10. “I can do whatever I want.” In an especially bitter irony, Obama uttered these despicable words while guiding French president François Hollande through Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson — a key architect of America’s foundation of limited government.That very day, Obama decreed that the Obamacare mandate for employers with 50 to 99 workers would be postponed until 2016 (beyond an earlier extension to 2015), well past the November 2014 midterm elections. This eases the pressure on Democrats, whose campaigns would suffer if voters saw their company health plans canceled due to Obamacare’s unnecessary, expensive, mandatory benefits — e.g. maternity coverage for men.

So, by fiat, Obama has postponed the employer mandate. When Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) effectively tried to do this through legislation last fall, Democrats virtually lassoed and branded him.

GEORGE WASHINGTON: PRESIDENT AND ENTREPRENEUR AND BUSINESS INNOVATOR BY JOHN BERLAU

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/371268/print

This month, America celebrates the birthday of one of the country’s earliest business innovators and large-scale entrepreneurs.

During America’s existence as a British colony and then a young nation — when communication and transportation faced challenges, to put it mildly — this businessman built an enterprise with international reach. He built a mill that ground 278,000 pounds of branded flour annually that was shipped throughout America and, unusual during colonial times, exported to Europe. And in the 1790s, late in his life, he built one of the new nation’s largest whiskey distilleries.

You might also know him from some of his political and military achievements. As commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, he led the nascent American nation to a hard-fought victory for independence. Then, a few years later, he became the new nation’s first president.

That’s right, this entrepreneur was none other than George Washington. Had he never led the Continental Army to victory over the British or become president, he would still have had the distinction of being one of America’s most successful early business leaders. As National Review senior editor Richard Brookhiser has written in his book George Washington on Leadership: “[Washington’s] agribusiness and real estate portfolio made him America’s richest man. . . . He was the Founding CEO.”

New York Public Library Hosts Tribute to Anti-Semitic and Homophobic 9/11 Truther By Daniel Greenfield See note please

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF A CULTURAL INSTITUTION THAT BOWS TO VULGAR AND BIGOTED POLITICAL CORRECTNESS….RSK

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/new-york-public-library-hosts-tribute-to-anti-semitic-and-homophobic-racist-911-truther/print/

It’s all right because it’s the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (and no, it’s not named after a Jewish donor, that would have been too much) and the anti-Semitic, racist homophobe in question was also the Poet Laureate of New Jersey… until the position had to be abolished to get rid of his hateful presence.

We’re talking about Amiri Baraka aka LeRoi Jones. The author of such timeless verses as “Youth ended, I shall try/My gain or loss thereby/Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold.”

Oh sorry. That’s Robert Browning. This is Amiri Baraka. “I got the extermination blues, jew-boys. I got the Hitler syndrome figured.”

This is also Amiri Baraka. “The fag’s death they gave us on a cross… they give us to worship a dead jew and not ourselves.”

And also, “We are all beautiful (except white people, they are full of, and made of shit).”

And let’s not forget, “Come up, black dada / nihilismus. Rape the white girls. Rape / their fathers. Cut the mothers’ throats.”

Or, “Most American white men are trained to be fags.”

HUMBERTO FONTOVA: VENEZUELANS “TAKING IT TO THE STREETS”

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/humberto-fontova/venezuelans-taking-it-to-the-streets/print/ “Venezuela and its revolution will endure under the proven leadership of Vice President Maduro.” (Sean Penn, March 5, 2013.) This is to say nothing of the “proven” –and particularly, the enduring–”leadership” of Maduro’s colonial overlords in Havana, of whom Sean Penn is also extremely fond. “I had the privilege to introduce my children to comandante […]