It astounds me how out of touch the current administration is. They get defensive and condescending when you question their strategies and decisions. A perfect example is the illogical statements that John Brennan made over this weekend. John Brennan, Deputy National Security Advisor, said that 20% for pickpockets and terrorists is not bad. Basically, they are the same, right? One steals your wallet and one steals your life. Jim Jones, (not that Jim Jones) National Security Adviser, spoke to Chris Wallace on Fox Sunday, tried to defend Brennan, but after Wallace played the Brennan video, Jones said that the 20% recidivism is unacceptable. He also said that we shouldn't keep the terrorists locked up forever. However, that is what a military tribunal process is for. The big issue has been the Obama adminstration has put the cart before the horse. Attorney General Eric Holder has botched this trial for terrorists, especially, the KSM trial. Everything is politicized in this administration. Then they blame everyone else for politicizing these same issues. South Carolina Linsay Graham, is demanding Brennan's resignation. If it were me, I would get rid of Brennan, Holder, Incompetano and Gibbs, for starters. Obama's choices have deteriorated our country's national security and defenses. It has underminded our military and law enforcement accomplishments and has made a mockery of the greatest legal system in the world. It is a cold slap in the face to schedule the terrorists trials in New York, where we lost three thousand innocent victims. Have they no feelings for the families and friends of the victims? It's all about putting America on trial. Since Obamessiah has completed the International Apology Tour, he still has to discredit our great nation. The administration is oblivious to what the populus wants, or they don't care. Whatever happens, Americans will voice their opinions at the midterm elections in November.
Jim Jones:
Lindsay Grahamesty on Brennan:
Dick Cheney, Part 1
Dick Cheney, Part II:
Green Piece: (This is good stuff)
Former CRU chief admits warming may not be unprecedented
by Ed Morrissey
posted at 10:54 am on February 14, 2010
In a rather stunning series of admissions, the suspended chief of the East Anglia CRU now admits that the warming seen in the late 20th century may not be unprecedented after all, that the planet has stopped warming for the last 15 years despite the predictions of AGW advocates, and that his own record-keeping has been poor. Phil Jones, who stepped down at least temporarily from his position at the CRU when its e-mails exposed a series of embarrassing attempts by climate scientists to undermine careers of skeptics and to hide contradictory data, now says that the entire basis of the “hockey stick” graph could have been invalid:
The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.
Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers. … The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.
But that’s just the start:
Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming. …
And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.
Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.
But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world.
Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.
‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.
‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’
The “hockey stick” graph has already been shown to be mainly a creation of graph-scaling bias, but this gets to the heart of the entire argument. During the MWP, farmers grew crops on Greenland for a couple of centuries. Until now, AGW advocates insisted that the warming only took place in the northern hemisphere. If that warming was indeed global, then it dwarfs anything seen in the 20th century, as these two charts from Climate Audit, via Sonic Frog, demonstrate:
If the massive warming seen in Europe occurred around the world, then what we have seen in the 20th century would be almost certainly a moderate, natural, cyclical warming coming out of a cold trough. It would also call into question what exactly a good temperature would be for the Earth. After all, even if the second graph only applied to the northern hemisphere, the increased temperatures didn’t cause the end of life on the planet; indeed, food became more plentiful, and the melting of the polar-region ice didn’t create massive catastrophes. Further underscoring this interpretation are the cooling cycles seen in the mid-century and last fifteen years or so, expecially since the 1940s saw a huge increase in carbon emissions due to wartime production.
Jones’ late admissions demonstrate that there is nothing “settled” about AGW, and that the process and the data are too murky for any declarations of certainty.
Daft Statement of the day:
Was there any actual warming to begin with?
Times of London
Sovereignty: We're not in Kansas anymore
9th, 10th Amendments key to developing tea-party movement
Posted: February 14, 2010
11:45 pm Eastern
WorldNetDaily
Editor's Note: The following report is excerpted from Jerome Corsi's Red Alert, the premium online newsletter published by the current No. 1 best-selling author, WND staff writer and columnist. Red Alert subscriptions are $99 a year or $9.95 per month for credit card users. Annual subscribers will receive a free autographed copy of "The Late Great USA," a book about the careful deceptions of a powerful elite who want to undermine our nation's sovereignty.
The Kansas Senate has joined an increasing number of states moving toward passing state sovereignty resolutions under the Ninth and 10th Amendments to the Constitution, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports.
"The key spirit of state sovereignty resolutions is to call for a massive pullback from the growth of the federal government under the proposition that powers not specifically enumerated to the federal government in the Constitution are reserved to the states and the people," Corsi explained.
A Kansas City Star blog noted the resolution "sends a message for Kansans upset with overreaching mandates like health-care reform, gun control, abortion rights and immigration policy."
The Kansas resolution still must pass the Kansas House of Representatives and be sent to the governor for signature into law.
Across the country, tea-party participants are finding the passing of state-sovereignty resolutions under the Ninth and 10th Amendment is key to advancing the goal of taking back control of government spending from Washington, D.C., to return that control to the states, Corsi wrote.
Tenth Amendment Center
While no state has yet passed into law a state-sovereignty resolution under the Ninth and 10th Amendments, a website called the Tenth Amendment Center has been established to network among proponents and coordinate volunteers.
"The emergence of this movement is a hopeful sign of the people asserting their rights and the rights of the states and finally crying 'enough' to runaway government," Dave Nalle notes on the Tenth Amendment Center website. "With the threat of increasingly out-of-control federal spending, some of these sovereignty bills may stand a fair chance of passage in the coming year."
The Tenth Amendment specifically provides, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Randy Brogdon runs for Oklahoma governor on sovereignty platform
Red Alert reports that Oklahoma Republican state Sen. Randy Brogdon has decided to run for governor on a platform that stresses limited government and a return to the principles of the Tenth Amendment.
Brogdon's main opponent in the July 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary in Oklahoma is expected to be Republican Rep. Mary Falin.
"The restitution of our constitutional liberties is the central theme of my campaign," Brogdon said. "I recognize that the elimination of our freedom is alive and well in the United States, and my goal as governor would be to stand against an over-reaching and tyrannical federal government that is reaching into the lives of Oklahomans right now."
Echoing themes heard in town-hall meetings and tea-party protests, Brogdon has campaigned hard against Obama administration trillion-dollar federal deficit spending and bailouts of the auto and financial services industries that Brogdon sees as attacks on the free-enterprise system itself.
"The Obama administration and the Democratic Congress in Washington have created a generational federal debt that our children may never be able to pay off," he said. "I'm calling for restoration. I want the values of our Founding Fathers restored in the hearts of every Oklahoman and American who loves liberty and is willing to defend it."
Brogdon opposed Oklahoma taking its nearly $2 billion share of the $787 Obama administration economic stimulus money, and he said that as governor he would appoint an attorney general who would refuse to take federal funds when federal programs created unconstitutional continuing obligations for Oklahoma.
"When the federal government passes something that is unconstitutional and expects the state of Oklahoma to participate in it, I'm going to look in my copy of the Constitution and if the measure does not comply with Article 1 Section 8, I'm going to tell the federal government 'No thank you!'"
Brogdon achieved national recognition in 2007 when Corsi reported his determination to fight the expansion of the Trans-Texas Corridor Interstate 35, or TTC-35, into Oklahoma, by sponsoring an Oklahoma resolution requiring the state to withdraw from the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America or participate in any project that would involve building NAFTA superhighways in the state.
Corsi subsequently reported that Brogdon sponsored an Oklahoma legislature joint resolution under which the state claimed sovereignty relying on the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.
"As governor, I would stand in the gap between the federal government and the people of this state," he said. "I will battle the federal government every single day until Washington realizes that Oklahoma is going to create a haven for private enterprise and freedom right here in this state."
Brogdon believes that as governor he can use the 10th Amendment to set a model in Oklahoma that other states will follow.
"It won't be long before other states start asking, 'How is Oklahoma standing up to the federal government,' and it won't be long before they follow our example," he said.
Red Alert's author, whose books "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command" have topped the New York Times best-sellers list, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. For nearly 25 years, beginning in 1981, he worked with banks throughout the U.S. and around the world to develop financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. In this career, Corsi developed three different third-party financial services marketing firms that reached gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. In 1999, he began developing Internet-based financial marketing firms, also adapted to work in conjunction with banks.
Ninth Amendment:The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Tenth Amendment:The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Quote du jour:
"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
Abraham Lincoln
Writings of Our Founding Fathers
Federalist Papers
Federalist No. 18
The Same Subject Continued: The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union
For the Independent Journal.
Author: Alexander Hamilton and James Madison
To the People of the State of New York:
AMONG the confederacies of antiquity, the most considerable was that of the Grecian republics, associated under the Amphictyonic council. From the best accounts transmitted of this celebrated institution, it bore a very instructive analogy to the present Confederation of the American States.
The members retained the character of independent and sovereign states, and had equal votes in the federal council. This council had a general authority to propose and resolve whatever it judged necessary for the common welfare of Greece; to declare and carry on war; to decide, in the last resort, all controversies between the members; to fine the aggressing party; to employ the whole force of the confederacy against the disobedient; to admit new members. The Amphictyons were the guardians of religion, and of the immense riches belonging to the temple of Delphos, where they had the right of jurisdiction in controversies between the inhabitants and those who came to consult the oracle. As a further provision for the efficacy of the federal powers, they took an oath mutually to defend and protect the united cities, to punish the violators of this oath, and to inflict vengeance on sacrilegious despoilers of the temple.
In theory, and upon paper, this apparatus of powers seems amply sufficient for all general purposes. In several material instances, they exceed the powers enumerated in the articles of confederation. The Amphictyons had in their hands the superstition of the times, one of the principal engines by which government was then maintained; they had a declared authority to use coercion against refractory cities, and were bound by oath to exert this authority on the necessary occasions.
Very different, nevertheless, was the experiment from the theory. The powers, like those of the present Congress, were administered by deputies appointed wholly by the cities in their political capacities; and exercised over them in the same capacities. Hence the weakness, the disorders, and finally the destruction of the confederacy. The more powerful members, instead of being kept in awe and subordination, tyrannized successively over all the rest. Athens, as we learn from Demosthenes, was the arbiter of Greece seventy-three years. The Lacedaemonians next governed it twenty-nine years; at a subsequent period, after the battle of Leuctra, the Thebans had their turn of domination.
It happened but too often, according to Plutarch, that the deputies of the strongest cities awed and corrupted those of the weaker; and that judgment went in favor of the most powerful party.
Even in the midst of defensive and dangerous wars with Persia and Macedon, the members never acted in concert, and were, more or fewer of them, eternally the dupes or the hirelings of the common enemy. The intervals of foreign war were filled up by domestic vicissitudes convulsions, and carnage.
After the conclusion of the war with Xerxes, it appears that the Lacedaemonians required that a number of the cities should be turned out of the confederacy for the unfaithful part they had acted. The Athenians, finding that the Lacedaemonians would lose fewer partisans by such a measure than themselves, and would become masters of the public deliberations, vigorously opposed and defeated the attempt. This piece of history proves at once the inefficiency of the union, the ambition and jealousy of its most powerful members, and the dependent and degraded condition of the rest. The smaller members, though entitled by the theory of their system to revolve in equal pride and majesty around the common center, had become, in fact, satellites of the orbs of primary magnitude.
Had the Greeks, says the Abbe Milot, been as wise as they were courageous, they would have been admonished by experience of the necessity of a closer union, and would have availed themselves of the peace which followed their success against the Persian arms, to establish such a reformation. Instead of this obvious policy, Athens and Sparta, inflated with the victories and the glory they had acquired, became first rivals and then enemies; and did each other infinitely more mischief than they had suffered from Xerxes. Their mutual jealousies, fears, hatreds, and injuries ended in the celebrated Peloponnesian war; which itself ended in the ruin and slavery of the Athenians who had begun it.
As a weak government, when not at war, is ever agitated by internal dissentions, so these never fail to bring on fresh calamities from abroad. The Phocians having ploughed up some consecrated ground belonging to the temple of Apollo, the Amphictyonic council, according to the superstition of the age, imposed a fine on the sacrilegious offenders. The Phocians, being abetted by Athens and Sparta, refused to submit to the decree. The Thebans, with others of the cities, undertook to maintain the authority of the Amphictyons, and to avenge the violated god. The latter, being the weaker party, invited the assistance of Philip of Macedon, who had secretly fostered the contest. Philip gladly seized the opportunity of executing the designs he had long planned against the liberties of Greece. By his intrigues and bribes he won over to his interests the popular leaders of several cities; by their influence and votes, gained admission into the Amphictyonic council; and by his arts and his arms, made himself master of the confederacy.
Such were the consequences of the fallacious principle on which this interesting establishment was founded. Had Greece, says a judicious observer on her fate, been united by a stricter confederation, and persevered in her union, she would never have worn the chains of Macedon; and might have proved a barrier to the vast projects of Rome.
The Achaean league, as it is called, was another society of Grecian republics, which supplies us with valuable instruction.
The Union here was far more intimate, and its organization much wiser, than in the preceding instance. It will accordingly appear, that though not exempt from a similar catastrophe, it by no means equally deserved it.
The cities composing this league retained their municipal jurisdiction, appointed their own officers, and enjoyed a perfect equality. The senate, in which they were represented, had the sole and exclusive right of peace and war; of sending and receiving ambassadors; of entering into treaties and alliances; of appointing a chief magistrate or praetor, as he was called, who commanded their armies, and who, with the advice and consent of ten of the senators, not only administered the government in the recess of the senate, but had a great share in its deliberations, when assembled. According to the primitive constitution, there were two praetors associated in the administration; but on trial a single one was preferred.
It appears that the cities had all the same laws and customs, the same weights and measures, and the same money. But how far this effect proceeded from the authority of the federal council is left in uncertainty. It is said only that the cities were in a manner compelled to receive the same laws and usages. When Lacedaemon was brought into the league by Philopoemen, it was attended with an abolition of the institutions and laws of Lycurgus, and an adoption of those of the Achaeans. The Amphictyonic confederacy, of which she had been a member, left her in the full exercise of her government and her legislation. This circumstance alone proves a very material difference in the genius of the two systems.
It is much to be regretted that such imperfect monuments remain of this curious political fabric. Could its interior structure and regular operation be ascertained, it is probable that more light would be thrown by it on the science of federal government, than by any of the like experiments with which we are acquainted.
One important fact seems to be witnessed by all the historians who take notice of Achaean affairs. It is, that as well after the renovation of the league by Aratus, as before its dissolution by the arts of Macedon, there was infinitely more of moderation and justice in the administration of its government, and less of violence and sedition in the people, than were to be found in any of the cities exercising SINGLY all the prerogatives of sovereignty. The Abbe Mably, in his observations on Greece, says that the popular government, which was so tempestuous elsewhere, caused no disorders in the members of the Achaean republic, BECAUSE IT WAS THERE TEMPERED BY THE GENERAL AUTHORITY AND LAWS OF THE CONFEDERACY.
We are not to conclude too hastily, however, that faction did not, in a certain degree, agitate the particular cities; much less that a due subordination and harmony reigned in the general system. The contrary is sufficiently displayed in the vicissitudes and fate of the republic.
Whilst the Amphictyonic confederacy remained, that of the Achaeans, which comprehended the less important cities only, made little figure on the theatre of Greece. When the former became a victim to Macedon, the latter was spared by the policy of Philip and Alexander. Under the successors of these princes, however, a different policy prevailed. The arts of division were practiced among the Achaeans. Each city was seduced into a separate interest; the union was dissolved. Some of the cities fell under the tyranny of Macedonian garrisons; others under that of usurpers springing out of their own confusions. Shame and oppression erelong awaken their love of liberty. A few cities reunited. Their example was followed by others, as opportunities were found of cutting off their tyrants. The league soon embraced almost the whole Peloponnesus. Macedon saw its progress; but was hindered by internal dissensions from stopping it. All Greece caught the enthusiasm and seemed ready to unite in one confederacy, when the jealousy and envy in Sparta and Athens, of the rising glory of the Achaeans, threw a fatal damp on the enterprise. The dread of the Macedonian power induced the league to court the alliance of the Kings of Egypt and Syria, who, as successors of Alexander, were rivals of the king of Macedon. This policy was defeated by Cleomenes, king of Sparta, who was led by his ambition to make an unprovoked attack on his neighbors, the Achaeans, and who, as an enemy to Macedon, had interest enough with the Egyptian and Syrian princes to effect a breach of their engagements with the league.
The Achaeans were now reduced to the dilemma of submitting to Cleomenes, or of supplicating the aid of Macedon, its former oppressor. The latter expedient was adopted. The contests of the Greeks always afforded a pleasing opportunity to that powerful neighbor of intermeddling in their affairs. A Macedonian army quickly appeared. Cleomenes was vanquished. The Achaeans soon experienced, as often happens, that a victorious and powerful ally is but another name for a master. All that their most abject compliances could obtain from him was a toleration of the exercise of their laws. Philip, who was now on the throne of Macedon, soon provoked by his tyrannies, fresh combinations among the Greeks. The Achaeans, though weakenened by internal dissensions and by the revolt of Messene, one of its members, being joined by the AEtolians and Athenians, erected the standard of opposition. Finding themselves, though thus supported, unequal to the undertaking, they once more had recourse to the dangerous expedient of introducing the succor of foreign arms. The Romans, to whom the invitation was made, eagerly embraced it. Philip was conquered; Macedon subdued. A new crisis ensued to the league. Dissensions broke out among it members. These the Romans fostered. Callicrates and other popular leaders became mercenary instruments for inveigling their countrymen. The more effectually to nourish discord and disorder the Romans had, to the astonishment of those who confided in their sincerity, already proclaimed universal liberty [1] throughout Greece. With the same insidious views, they now seduced the members from the league, by representing to their pride the violation it committed on their sovereignty. By these arts this union, the last hope of Greece, the last hope of ancient liberty, was torn into pieces; and such imbecility and distraction introduced, that the arms of Rome found little difficulty in completing the ruin which their arts had commenced. The Achaeans were cut to pieces, and Achaia loaded with chains, under which it is groaning at this hour.
I have thought it not superfluous to give the outlines of this important portion of history; both because it teaches more than one lesson, and because, as a supplement to the outlines of the Achaean constitution, it emphatically illustrates the tendency of federal bodies rather to anarchy among the members, than to tyranny in the head.
PUBLIUS.
References:
http://www.hotair.com/
http://www.wnd.com/
http://www.weeklystandard.com/
http://www.youtube.com/
http://www.foxnews.com/
http://www.quotationspage.com/
http://www.drudgereport.com/
http://www.thehill.com/
Times of London
Ed Morrissey
http://www.abcnews.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment