Turns out the release was planned prepared ahead of the snowstorm, which shut federal agencies today and forced its senders to hold a press conference by telephone instead of at the National Press Club.
It’s not the first time inclement weather has put a chill on official efforts to tackle climate change. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had to leave the Copenhagen summit early in December to get back to D.C. before the blizzard known as Snowpocalypse grounded all flights.
Michael Jackson’s physician appeared in a Los Angeles courtroom today where he pleaded not guilty to charges of involuntary manslaughter in the pop singer’s death, capping an eight-month investigation and kicking off what is expected to be a closely watched celebrity trial.
Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. John Murtha, the first veteran of the Vietnam war and one of the most powerful lawmakers in Congress, died Wednesday morning at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, VA, after complications from gallbladder surgery. Murtha was 77.
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.
America’s prior Great Awakenings, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, were religious in nature. Unimpressed with self-serving, ossified, and often corrupt religious institutions, Americans responded with a bottom-up reassertion of faith, and independence.
This time, it’s different. It’s not America’s churches and seminaries that are in trouble: It’s America’s politicians and parties. They’ve grown corrupt, venal, and out-of-touch with the values, and the people, that they’re supposed to represent. So the people, once again, are reasserting themselves.
Just like global cooling of the ’70’s, this is looking more and more like it will soon all just go away.
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.
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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.
I just hope the democrats keep doing what they have been. It has certainly been working in favor of the conservative cause.
The Democratic activists in attendance were also frustrated—they say they want to hear more from their leadership in Washington. Following consecutive losses in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts – all states Obama carried in 2008 – jittery Democrats here said they expect better communication to the public about what the administration and Congress have accomplished.
Reagan is a great conservative hero for what he wasn’t as well as for what he was. In an era when people thought the entree to political leadership was a degree from an elite university and a lifetime spent currying favor and working within the establishment, Reagan was a small-town Midwesterner who’d gone to an obscure college and spent most of his adult life doing other things: a sportscaster, an actor, a pundit. He was well into middle age before he got into electoral politics.
Republicans sparred with President Barack Obama over proposals to create jobs in dueling radio addresses Saturday, highlighting the difficulty of reaching bipartisan solutions in a political climate marked by partisan bickering.
The organizers of this weekend’s National Tea Party — who have been accused of trying to take a leadership role in the grassroots movement largely defined by its lack of centralized leadership — announced on Friday that they are forming a political action committee to “address the next step in the growing impact of the citizen activist movement.”
Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.
Twelve-year-old Alexa Gonzalez scribbled “Lex was here 2/1/10″ on her desk Monday at Junior High School 190 in Queens. She also wrote “I love my friends Abby and Faith.” The girl says the doodles could have been erased.
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Education department spokesman David Cantor said the incident shouldn’t have happened, and that common sense should prevail.
This being a democracy, don’t the Democrats see that clinging to this agenda will march them over a cliff? Don’t they understand Massachusetts?
Well, they understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid, and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.
The first night’s speaker said the country “put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House,” referring to the president by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama, and launching a tirade against the “cult of multiculturalism” that led to his election.
The Dow returned to four-digit territory on Friday as persisting worries about the debt of slow-growing European countries and a mixed jobs report prevented Wall Street from rebounding from its worst day in more than nine months.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said Thursday he is frightened by the size of the federal debt and House Democrats voting today to increase the borrowing cap to $14.2 trillion.
This sounds about right. Socialists are the last to figure out that socialism is a dehumanizing and horrible form of government. They also cannot figure out how you eventually run out of other peoples money.
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.
U.S. employers unexpectedly cut 20,000 in January, but the unemployment rate surprisingly fell to a five-month low of 9.7 percent, according to a government report on Friday that hinted at some labor market improvement starting to take root.
Residents have been fighting for years for the right to put in reinforcing stones or other structures, but have been denied at every turn because of the beetles. Glenn Therres, a biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (MDNR), says the agency will try to help homeowners – but not at the cost of the beetles.
The health care bill is in trouble, but a series of narrow deals — each designed to win over a wavering senator or key interest group — is alive and well, despite voter anger over the parochial horse-trading that marked the rush toward passage before Christmas.
With the exception of Nebraska Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson’s “Cornhusker Kickback,” which alienated independent voters and came to symbolize an out-of-touch Washington, none of the other narrow provisions that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid inserted into the bill appear to be in any kind of danger as Democrats try to figure out the way ahead.
The US transportation chief’s public rebukes of Toyota’s handling of a massive safety recall have raised eyebrows, given the US government’s major stake in rivals General Motors and Chrysler.
“The optics are terrible because — and this is what happens when a government owns a company - the two companies that are going to gain the most out of this are General Motors and Chrysler,” said Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland’s business school.
The State Department has refused to answer basic questions about an accident that took place in Washington on Wednesday night, in which a U.S. Diplomatic Security Service vehicle struck Daily Caller employee Sean Medlock as he was crossing the street.
Growing fears over the health of Europe’s weakest economies rocked global markets on Thursday, sparking sharp falls in shares on the continent and a worldwide flight to the safety of the US dollar and Treasuries.
The impact of declining sentiment in Europe was compounded in the US by poor employment data, with the number of American workers claiming jobless benefits rising unexpectedly last week.
So the Lancet, a British medical journal named after a really sharp object, retracted a horrible study attempting to link measle vaccines to autism.
Now this would really be great news, if the study had not come out, oh, 12 years ago. It’s really scary that it took a medical journal over a decade to admit what nearly everyone else with a working brain knew: the study had more gaping holes in it than Tom Sizemore’s septum.
But sadly, although the study author has also been discredited for this harmful crud, it doesn’t matter. People who believe in junk science will continue to believe in junk science, because their egos won’t allow any other option. And so they will continue preaching to parents a dangerous and false belief that ends up killing kids.
Don’t look now. But even as the bank bailout is winding down, another huge bailout is starting, this time for the Social Security system.
A report from the Congressional Budget Office shows that for the first time in 25 years, Social Security is taking in less in taxes than it is spending on benefits.
