Monday, April 25, 2011

A profile of Courage and a lawyer

Anti-DOMA, Pro-Clement: “It is gratifying to see that many of those who oppose DOMA have nonetheless praised Paul Clement’s willingness to defend the law, and his refusal to abandon the representation.” More here.

UPDATE: The Left Politicizes The Practice Of Law. “The law firm’s action was unusual, to say the least. No doubt there is precedent for a law firm abandoning a client because it comes under political pressure, but I can’t think of one offhand. Most lawyers think they are made of sterner stuff than that.” Well, they’ll attract more pressure in the future, now that people know that it works.

No, it is worse, much worse and much more in our national interest to fix

White House: Syria Not Another Libya

AP
As Obama administration prepares 'targeted sanctions' against Syrian regime, White House spokesman dismisses comparisons to unrest in Libya, calling Qaddafi's rule a 'unique situation.'

WHO IS JOHN GALT

Saw Atlas Shrugged tonight. Much better than expected. You will either love and understand it or be left wondering.

CNN

S.O.S.: CNN PIERS MORGAN DOWN TO 265,000 VIEWERS...

Moslems

60+ Churches Burned in Nigerian Muslim Stronghold

AP Graphics

By Ethan Cole

More than 60 churches were burned and thousands of Christian-owned homes destroyed in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north after the recent election of incumbent Christian president Goodluck Jonathan, according to the Christian persecution watchdog group Open Doors.

Riots broke out Monday after the preliminary results of Saturday's vote were announced. Jonathan, who was sworn in as president in May 2010, was announced president over his Muslim opponent Muhammadu Buhari.

"Last year there were more martyrs in Nigeria - approximately 2,000 Christians killed in the northern part - than in any other country in the world," said Open Doors USA President/CEO Carl Moeller. "Nigeria is such a key country in the spread of Christianity all over Africa."

"Please join me in prayer for the Christians there, especially for those in the north," he added.

Trump: Obama did not deserve an Ivy League education

Real estate mogul Donald Trump suggested in an interview Monday that President Barack Obama had been a poor student who did not deserve to be admitted to the Ivy League universities he attended. Trump, who is mulling a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, offered no proof for his claim but said he would continue to press the matter as he has the legitimacy of the president's birth certificate.

I'm not supporting Trump for president, but I appreciate Trump taking on the b.s. Obama Narrative.

Britain: radicalization center for Muslim extremists

At least 35 terrorists incarcerated at Guantánamo Bay were sent to fight against the West after being indoctrinated by extremist preachers in Britain, secret files obtained by The Daily Telegraph disclose.

Why do they hate a self made woman?

The Left's Conspiratorial Hatred for Sarah Palin is Truly Unprecedented

They hated Reagan and Bush, but this is even worse.

What?

Ex-Obama Adviser Pushes Rights for Mother Nature

EXCLUSIVE: Former 'green jobs czar' Van Jones calls for environment to have same rights status as humans

Not letting up

TRUMP: Obama Not Worthy of Ivy Leagues... 'Terrible student,' not good enough for Harvard...

NLJ 250 Shed 2900 Lawyers in 2010

Revised 2010 figures show that NLJ 250 firms employed 2,868 fewer lawyers than in 2009.

McLaren F1

Your ridiculously awesome McLaren F1

First Internet Poker, now Chocolate Eggs, what are these people thinking.

Feds Raid NYC Stores for Illegal Chocolate Eggs

Manhattan candy sellers had their Kinder eggs confiscated in raids by Consumer Product Safety Commission last week, DNAinfo has learned.

The businesses, which sold the hollow milk chocolate eggs that contain a toy in a plastic capsule, were profiled by DNAinfo last week. The CPSC has banned the eggs, which are popular abroad and made by Italian manufacturer, Ferraro, because they are viewed as a choking hazard.

Barbour ends speculation

Haley Barbour decides not
to run in 2012

O and Oil

Shell-Shocked: Gas Prices
Soar, EPA Blocks Drilling

ENERGY IN AMERICA: Shell forced to cut oil drilling off Alaska after EPA ruling, leaving 27B barrels in limbo

Despite $4 Gas, Obama Boots Shell From Arctic Drill Site

Will Biden be on Obama's 2012 presidential ticket?

Joanne Butler--DE resident and Daily Caller contributor observes:

"For those who are seeking signs and portents for the 2012 presidential matchup, may I suggest a trip to Delaware? Here’s what you won’t be seeing: Joe Biden’s name on the “Obama 2012” bumper stickers.

Yes, even though it’s only April 2011, the latest Obama bumper stickers have arrived, along with the heavy spring pollen count. But I thought it was curious that the campaign hadn’t done a special run, at least, of “Obama-Biden” stickers for the Blue Hen State."

http://dailycaller.com/2011/04/25/even-in-delaware-obama-2012-bumper-stickers-dont-mention-biden/

Why the Border matters.

#1 Nobody knows for sure how many illegal aliens are in the United States today, but the highest estimates put the number at well over 30 million.

#2 Today, far more immigrants move into the United States illegally than come in through the legal process.

#3 The vast majority of illegal aliens would never even dream of paying income taxes, but Mexicans living in America send billions upon billions of dollars out of the United States and back to Mexico every single year.

#4 Although illegal aliens pay next to nothing in taxes, they have no problem receiving tens of billions of dollars worth of free education benefits, free health care benefits, free housing assistance and free food stamp benefits.

#5 It is estimated that U.S. taxpayers spend $12,000,000,000 a year on primary and secondary school education for the children of illegal immigrants.

MSM is protecting Obama's presidency through omission

Rising Gas Prices Linked to Obama Drilling Ban in Just 1% of Evening News Stories

Main Findings:

- Gas prices have risen almost $1-a-gallon since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, yet President Obama's drilling moratorium and other anti-oil policies have barely been mentioned by the networks in that time span.

- Only 1 percent (3 out of 280) of oil price stories since the spill has made any connection between the administration's anti-oil actions and the jump in gasoline prices.

IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end

We need leadership from the White House to prove the IMF wrong. Unfortunately, leadership will never come from the President we have now. I get the sickening feeling he relishes the demise of this country and is actively working to bring us down a peg or two. One example: giving loans to other countries to drill for oil off their shores (Brazil), while discouraging--through the EPA--drilling by Americans off our shores and elsewhere.

Back to the IMF:
The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.

For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.

And it’s a lot closer than you may think.

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.

Put that in your calendar.

500-Year-Old Book Surfaces in Utah

April 23: A copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle published in 1493 is displayed at Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City.

A copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle published in 1493 is displayed at Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City.

SALT LAKE CITY -- Book dealer Ken Sanders has seen a lot of nothing in his decades appraising "rare" finds pulled from attics and basements, storage sheds and closets.

Sanders, who occasionally appraises items for PBS's Antiques Roadshow, often employs "the fine art of letting people down gently."

But on a recent Saturday while volunteering at a fundraiser for the small town museum in Sandy, Utah, just south of Salt Lake, Sanders got the surprise of a lifetime.

"Late in the afternoon, a man sat down and started unwrapping a book from a big plastic sack, informing me he had a really, really old book and he thought it might be worth some money," he said. "I kinda start, oh boy, I've heard this before."

Then he produced a tattered, partial copy of the 500-year-old Nuremberg Chronicle.

The German language edition printed by Anton Koberger and published in 1493 is a world history beginning in biblical times. It's considered to be one of the earliest and most lavishly illustrated books produced after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and revolutionized publishing.

"I was just absolutely astounded. I was flabbergasted, particularly here in the interior West," Sanders said. "We might see a lot of rare Mormon books and other treasures, but you don't expect to see a five centuries old book, you don't expect to see one of the oldest printed books in the world pop up in Sandy, Utah."

Thru the cat door

See you later, alligator! Women flees home after finding unwanted visitor in her guest bedroom (he also popped to the bathroom)

Injured: The gator had managed to injure himself, either outside or while trying to squeeze himself through the cat flap of Miss Dunbar's home

Alexis Dunbar, of Palmetto in Manatee County, Florida, returned to her home to find a six-foot alligator making himself at home in her house

Maryland’s title victory secures mom’s dying wish

One son plays with Maryland, the other son plays for Duke.

Shortly after John Tillman took over Maryland’s lacrosse program in June, the mother of star attackman Ryan Young told him there were two things she wanted from the new coach: to see to it the senior attackman graduated and ensure he earned a title before his career was over.

Maria Young died April 17 from pancreatic cancer. A week later, the visiting Terrapins defeated Duke 11-9 at Koskinen Stadium in the ACC tournament final.

“I told them we couldn’t let her down,” Tillman said while wearing a purple Maryland lacrosse shirt promoting pancreatic cancer awareness.

The third-seeded Terps (10-3) didn’t in front of a crowd of 4,328 featuring dozens of purple-clad Maryland fans, rallying from a three-goal deficit in the first half to secure its first ACC championship since 2005.

Why you are paying $4 a gallon

The EPA’s appeals board ruled that Shell had not taken into consideration emissions from an ice-breaking vessel when calculating overall greenhouse gas emissions from the project.

The closest village to where Shell proposed to drill is Kaktovik, Alaska. It is one of the most remote places in the United States. According to the latest census, the population is 245 and nearly all of the residents are Alaska natives. The village, which is 1 square mile, sits right along the shores of the Beaufort Sea, 70 miles away from the proposed off-shore drill site.

Environmental groups were thrilled by the ruling.

Wow!

Democrats 'Truthers'

"How likely is it that people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?" the poll asked.

A full 22.6% of Democrats said it was "very likely." Another 28.2% called it "somewhat likely."

That is: More than half of Democrats, according to a neutral survey, said they believed Bush was complicit in the 9/11 terror attacks.

This is not good for either side. It is predictable as the SC likes the political process to play out.

Breaking: Supreme Court rejects fast-track appeal on ObamaCare; Update: Cuccinelli says “Disappointing, not surprising”

No rush?

Half Jet Ski, half airplane

FlyNano

Catering to the tastes of the more adventurous water sports enthusiasts, the FlyNano looks a bit like a Jet Ski that's sprouted wings.

Invented by Finnish aviation consultant Aki Suokas, the ultra-lightweight (under 70 kilograms, say the company) single-seat aircraft is made from carbon fiber composite and will reach speeds in excess of 140 kph (over 85 mph).

Measuring 3.5 meters nose to tail and with a wingspan of five meters, the FlyNano can also fly to a height of a rather scary sounding three kilometers (1.9 miles).

Anyone who owns a pilot's license or has experience of flying a microlight, Suokas says, will be able to control the FlyNano "right out of the box."

I suspect they had inside help

Taliban dig tunnel to free 450 prisoners from Kandahar jail

After digging a 1,000-foot tunnel under Kandahar’s main prison, the Taliban on Monday morning freed more than 450 prisoners from jail, in the latest major security breach at the troubled facility, according to Afghan officials and insurgent statements.

In celebrating the escape, a Taliban spokesman said more than 100 insurgent commanders were among those who slipped out of the Sarposa prison’s political wing into the pre-dawn darkness. Zabiullah Mujahid said in a message to the media that the plan was carried out after five months of careful preparation.

Light bulbs are getting strange

Alessi’s LED Light Bulbs Don’t Need No Stinking Lampshade Covering Them Up

I love that you don't need to hide Alessi's first range of LED lightbulbs under a lampshade—in fact, they are the lampshades when screwed into Giovanni Alessi Anghini and Gabriele Chiave's Lumière desk lamp. The AlessiLux collection has several different bulbs to choose from—isn't the green U2Mi2 robot bulb cute?—which are on sale now at ForeverLamp's website, starting at 42.50 Euros ($62) each.

Top five most indebted U.S. cities.

San Antonio, Jacksonville, Atlanta, Honolulu, and Dallas.

American families nationwide are still struggling to get themselves back on a firm financial footing, according to recent research. A study from Equifax, the credit report agency, has found that the credit-card debt burden of some households accounts for a staggering 17 percent of their income. This doesn't even take into account debt from store-specific credit cards, so the full extent of this problem could be even worse than these figures suggests.

Experian has also analyzed consumer spending habits, finding that the average consumer is now laden with more than $4,200 in credit card debt, which, although down a modest 4 percent from last year's average, still represents a high proportion of many families' earnings.

Obama Loses L.A. Times

What's happening in Libya? When we last checked in, President Obama had said that the United States would participate in the U.N.-sponsored no-fly zone but that this was not — repeat not — a war to oust Moammar Kadafi. Rather, the narrow purpose of the operation was to avert humanitarian disaster. He acknowledged that he would like to see Kadafi go, but said that under no circumstances would ground troops be sent in to make that happen. Instead, the U.S. would use nonmilitary means to hasten the strongman's departure. The president tied it all up in a neat package and made it sound promising and uplifting, like a victory for morality, for democracy, for innocent civilians at risk and for the whole idea of limited humanitarian intervention.

But now, several weeks later, that neat package is coming undone. The war rages on. The rebels, disorganized and underequipped, are neither winning nor losing; Kadafi is neither firmly entrenched nor on his way out, as far as anyone knows. NATO, its members still squabbling among themselves, has no formal mandate to oust the Libyan leader but is unwilling to walk away either. Hundreds have died, while the diplomatic and economic squeeze has so far proved unsuccessful.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-libya-20110423,0,4363408.story

This is how O is forcing gas prices up. Agenda Driven.

Energy in America: EPA Rules Force Shell to Abandon Oil Drilling Plans

Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board to withhold critical air permits. The move has angered some in Congress and triggered a flurry of legislation aimed at stripping the EPA of its oil drilling oversight.

Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion dollars on plans to explore for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The leases alone cost $2.2 billion. Shell Vice President Pete Slaiby says obtaining similar air permits for a drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico would take about 45 days. He’s especially frustrated over the appeal board’s suggestion that the Arctic drill would somehow be hazardous for the people who live in the area. “We think the issues were really not major,” Slaiby said, “and clearly not impactful for the communities we work in.”

Samuelson is perhaps the most respected economist/journalist

'Obama Has No Plan to Balance the Budget'

AP Graphic

By Robert J. Samuelson

...His recent budget speech at George Washington University was a telling model of evasion, contradiction and deception. He warned that by 2025 present tax levels would suffice only to pay for “Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security and the interest we owe on our debt. . . . Every other national priority — education, transportation, even our national security — will have to be paid for with borrowed money.” He noted that businesses may not invest in a country that seems “unable to balance its books.”

Fine. But Obama has no plan to balance the budget — ever. He asserted “every kind of spending [is] on the table.” But every kind of spending is not on the table. He virtually ruled out cutting Social Security, the government’s biggest program (2011 spending: $727 billion). For example, Social Security is excluded from a proposed “trigger” that would automatically reduce spending and raise taxes if certain deficit targets weren’t met. He also put Medicare (2011 spending: $572 billion) largely off-limits.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-budget-conversation-we-should-be-having/2011/04/22/AFvhu4dE_story.html

Pattern and response

WH Fails to Release Easter Proclamation

President Obama failed to release a statement or a proclamation recognizing the national observance of Easter Sunday, Christianity's most sacred holiday.

By comparison, the White House has released statements recognizing the observance of major Muslim holidays and released statements in 2010 on Ramadan, Eid-ul-Fitr, Hajj, and Eid-ul-Adha.

The White House also failed to release a statement marking Good Friday. However, they did release an eight-paragraph statement heralding Earth Day. Likewise, the president's weekend address mentioned neither Good Friday or Easter.

Lightning striking at White House on Easter night...

O’s latest suggestion or solutions.

GAS PRICES TOO HIGH? Buy a new car! Food-price inflation cutting into your budget? Get a better job!

Who said there were no easy answers?

When Oil Prices Double, Recession Often Follows

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2011/04/25/When-Oil-Prices-Double-Recession-Often-Follows.aspx

What kills your breed

Researchers of a landmark UGA study regarding breed-specific causes of death in dogs sit with their own pets. Daniel Promislow (left) is flanked by Silver, a Weimaraner (bottom left) and Frisbee, a mixed breed (center). Dr. Kate Creevy (right) sits with her Border Collie, Makazi.

Breed-Specific Causes of Death in Dogs Revealed in Landmark Study

ScienceDaily (Apr. 19, 2011) — Dog owners and veterinarians have long relied on a mix of limited data and anecdotal evidence to assess which breeds are at risk of dying from various conditions, but a new University of Georgia study provides a rare and comprehensive look at causes of death in more than 80 breeds.

Toy breeds, such as Chihuahuas and Maltese, are known to have high rates of cardiovascular disease (19 and 21 percent of deaths within the breeds, respectively), for example, but the researchers found that Fox Terriers also have high rates of cardiovascular disease (16 percent of deaths). Golden retrievers and boxers are known to have high rates of cancer (50 and 44 percent of deaths, respectively), but the researchers found that the Bouvier des Flandres actually has a higher death rate from cancer (47 percent) than the boxer.

The researchers found that larger breeds are more likely to die of musculoskeletal disease, gastrointestinal disease and, most notably, cancer. Smaller breeds had higher death rates from metabolic diseases, such as diabetes and Cushing's disease.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110419151440.htm