The New York Daily News reported last night (Thursday, 1/29/2010):

The White House ordered the Justice Department Thursday night to consider other places to try the 9/11 terror suspects after a wave of opposition to holding the trial in lower Manhattan.

The dramatic turnabout came hours after Mayor Bloomberg said he would “prefer that they did it elsewhere” and then spoke to Attorney General Eric Holder.

Well, the dam appears to be breaking on ostensibly what is the easiest of the “Jack Bauer War” issues facing the Obama Administration: that is, where to try KSM.  I say “ostensibly” because the matter of where to try KSM will not be as easy it may seem.

All this being said, there are all sorts of conflicting stories about whether or not this will happen.  See Jack Foster’s piece at NRO.

According to the Daily News’ account four options are being considered – all in New York State:  1) Governors Island (near Manhattan and Brooklyn); 2) West Point, N.Y. (U.S. Military Academy); 3) Newburgh, N.Y. (Stewart Air National Guard Base); and 4) Otisville, NY (Federal Correction Institution).

Why won’t this be so easy?  First, leaving aside Governor’s Island, these communities will go crazy in opposition.  Even Governor’s Island may not leave New Yorkers feeling warm and fuzzy.  Second, a civilian trial will still be a disaster.  Think Slobodan Milošević turning the Hague into a circus for a year.  Enormous damage will be done to the national security.  Third, the cost will still be enormous.  Fourth, what civilian will risk his or his family’s well-being to sit on the jury?  Can the jurors identity be protected?

I guess the good news is that they can always move the trial back to Guantanamo.  Didn’t KSM already plead guilty before a military commission down there and ask to be executed?  Oh, I forgot, he was given the mass-murdering-jihadist-criminal-procedure-do-over-and-mulligan.

So, how long does Eric Holder have left as Attorney General?

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I follow national security news stories pretty closely, but I have to admit to being shocked by Human Events magazine’s publication of an excerpt from a new book.  It is Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, by Marc Thiessen.  Thiessen was a top speechwriter for President George W. Bush.  For that reason he had access to very highly classified national security documents and information.

One excerpt about information gathered from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (“KSM”) is astounding, mind-boggling:

[KSM’s] resistance is described by one senior American official as “superhuman.”  Eventually, however, the techniques work….

He begins telling his CIA de-briefers about active al Qaeda plots to launch attacks against the United States and other Western targets  He holds classes for CIA officials, using a chalkboard to draw a picture of al Qaeda’s operating structure, financing, communications, and logistics.  He identifies al Qaeda travel routes and safe havens, and helps intelligence officers make sense of documents and computer records seized in terrorist raids.   He identifies voices in intercepted telephone calls, and helps officials understand the meaning of coded terrorist communications.  He provides information that helps our intelligence community capture other high-ranking terrorists,

KSM’s questioning, and that of other captured terrorists, produces more than 6,000 intelligence reports, which are shared across the intelligence community, as well as with our allies across the world.

Perhaps I’ve been under a rock, but I never heard these details before.  I assume they are correct.

Some of the KSM information appears to have foiled an August 2006 plot to destroy seven airliners flying across the Atlantic from London-Heathrow in a revised version of KSM’s failed 1994-1995 Bojinka operation.

Top CIA officials are clear that the enhanced interrogation methods in the Bush counter-terrorism program were essential to obtaining extremely valuable, life-saving information. According to Thiessen, Obama shut the program down within 48 hours of assuming office when he signed Executive Order 13491.  That order allowed only interrogation techniques permitted in the U.S. Army Field Manual 2 22.3.  The manual does not permit water boarding, for example.

The Left and President Obama have completely misread the desires of the American people on this matter.  I put it this way:  Jack Bauer – Yes; Nation Building – No.  That is, the American people want to fight the jihadists in any manner necessary to kill and defeat them anywhere in the world.  They have never waivered on this principle, and that includes keeping Guantanamo prison open in Cuba.  It also means keeping it filled.  That said, the American people have never been keen on protracted wars of attrition, counter-insurgency, and/or nation-building – see, Iraq and Afghanistan.

To be fair, President Obama may have been fooled by John McCain’s idiosyncratic positions on interrogations and Gitmo.  I mean idiosyncratic for a Republican.  Inside the GOP there are very few people who agree with McCain on either position.

That said, the Obama Administration clearly does not understand how Americans feel about Jack Bauer’s War.  Consequently, its behavior after capturing the underwear bomber left bare a policy which American’s deem to be ill-advised and dangerous.  Instead of treating Flight 253’s Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as an enemy combatant, Obama/Holder have decided to try him in federal courts.  After singing for a mere six hours, Abdulmutallab was given a lawyer and has stopped talking.  Now he’s negotiating with prosecutors.

Look above at Thiessen’s quote and think about the information that would have been lost had KSM only talked to us for six hours.  Seven planes lost over the Atlantic?  That’s a pretty high price to pay for adherence to glib liberalism.

This is a public opinion cancer that will not go away for the administration.  The KSM trial in New York City may decimate the Democrat Party in that State, and it will go on for months and years.  Now there will be a trial in Detroit for Abdulmutallab.  And, heaven forbid, that an actual attack on the United States or Americans overseas succeeds.  Obama would be finished instantaneously.  Every Gitmo prisoner brought to the United States will constitute a new crisis.

Therefore, it is completely unsurprising that Scott Brown, the senator-elect from Massachusetts, was able to pound Martha Coakley on this point.  Brown is a USAF reserve JAG officer who was able to hammer away at the Dem’s soft position on terrorism.  This he succeeded in doing even in ultra-liberal Massachusetts.

In sum, while we are correct in focusing on the health care legislation as the core political issue at present.  I would argue that the Obama Administration’s foreign policy and national security strategy are hurting it and doing so at an increasing rate of damage with the passage of time.

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He’s probably the world’s funniest vegan. Fred Grandy is known to millions of Americans as “Gopher” from the hit 70s comedy series, The Love Boat. The Harvard-educated Grandy is the former four-term Republican Congressman from Iowa. He narrowly lost the GOP nomination for Governor in 1994 and went on to serve ably as president of Goodwill Industries. Since 2003, he had had a better platform to reach workers in the nation’s capital as co-host of the drive-time Grandy and Andy [Parks] Morning Show on radio station WMAL. I’ll confess that when I should be listening to books-on-disk, I often give an ear to Fred Grandy’s offbeat humor and generally smart conservative chatter. He’s not reflexively right wing. Few Iowans are. But, in addition to some side-splitting jokes, he brings some Midwest common sense to a capital badly in need of somebody’s common sense.

That’s why it matters when a good man like Fred Grandy launches into a shtick that includes this: “Oh, the Founders, they thought black people were just three-fifths of a person.” Maybe Fred was joking. Maybe he was pulling everyone’s leg. But it didn’t sound like it.

Political theorists can get pretty heavy duty. Which is why morning drive time includes very few of them as talk show hosts. Bill Bennett is one of the few who can pull it off successfully. But political theorists talk about “ideological hegemony.” That means you get the other guy–your opponent–to think in categories that you’ve determined in advance. Another phrase would be “setting the terms of the debate.”

If even conservatives seriously think that the Founders were so racist as to deny the full humanity of black people, then, “Houston, we’ve got a problem.” Grandy’s “three-fifths” crack echoes Al Gore’s infamous rants during the 2000 campaign. Gore demagogically whipped up crowds in Pennsylvania saying that those who favored “original intent” in constitutional interpretation wanted to deprive black people of their civil rights. They thought you were only three-fifths of a person, Gore suggested.

The Founders thought no such thing. The much-misunderstood Three-Fifths Compromise was just that, a compromise. Northern, anti-slavery delegates to the Constitutional Convention would have preferred not to count slaves at all for purposes of representation in Congress. This would have penalized slaveholding states and given them lesser influence in the House of Representatives. Just as important, it would have penalized them in the Electoral College that chooses our Presidents. Delegates from slaveholding states would have preferred to count slaves fully for purposes of representation, but they didn’t want to be taxed fully for slaves.

So the Founders compromised. It’s important to point out that such a compromise also existed in the Articles of Confederation, prior to the Constitution, when all taxation was by state.

A little-noted feature of the Three-Fifths Compromise is that it gave a reward–an electoral bump, if you will–to all states that emancipated their slaves. Free the black people of your state, and you get to count them fully for Congress. Then, American you can increase your numbers in the House and in the Electoral College.

Seven of the original Thirteen States got that reward. Tragically, six of the original thirteen failed to free their slaves. And other slaveholding states were later admitted to the Union.

The Founders were anti-slavery. They took pains never to use the words “slave,” “Negro,” “African,” etc, in the great charter of freedom they gave us.

Abraham Lincoln’s Midwest common sense exceeded even that of Fred Grandy. Lincoln said the Founders hid away in the Constitution the fact that we had slavery, just as a man who has a tumor or wen or other defect tries to hide it from view. Frederick Douglass hailed the Founders’ Constitution and said not of word of it would have to be changed if the states would only agree to free their slaves. They were both right.

Why does any of this matter today? Because President Barack Obama is using the tragedy of American slavery in 1787 as a pretext for casting aspersions on the Founders’ great work. Why should we listen to the authors of the Constitution? They allowed slavery to exist. They thought black people were only three-fifths of a person. So goes the liberal take on the Constitution.

It wasn’t true then. It’s not true now. Lincoln knew that if the Founders had tried to ban slavery outright in 1787, the liberty-promoting Constitution would never have been adopted. But the principles of the Declaration of Independence as embodied in the Constitution were, Lincoln said, like “apples of gold in pictures of silver.” Lincoln used the words of Scripture to speak of his awe and reverence for the Founders’ work. Should we have less?

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While the U.S. is drawing down forces in Iraq and building up, by some 30,000, our troops in Afghanistan, thousands of American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guard are returning to the homeland. Thanks to Operation Welcome Home Maryland, those who come into Baltimore-Washington International airport will not come home alone.

They’ll be greeted by dozens of people from the local community, many of them former service members themselves. Some of these older veterans can tell sad stories of returning from Vietnam to a cold and sullen airport arrival. No more. Operation Welcome Home is determined to give our all-volunteer servicemen and women the homecoming they deserve.

Incoming flights are posted on the organization’s website—www.operationwelcomehomemd.org.  Greeters are invited to bring “goodie bags” of food, water, and other favors from home. When the uniformed service members come through those arrival gates, many are stunned to see the reception committee yelling, cheering, applauding, and playing “I’m proud to be an American” on iPods. To be hugged by total strangers is an unusual experience, to say the least.

But they are not total strangers. They cannot be total strangers. For those who have worn the uniform, no one in the military will ever again be a total stranger. Perhaps watching the made-for-TV series, Band of Brothers, can explain that all-too-bloodless term “unit cohesion.” It might better be called the Bond of Brothers.

The most shocking thing about Fort Hood is that an obvious traitor in our midst was allowed–for reasons of political correctness–to move freely among our troops. Someone at the highest levels should pay with his stars for allowing such a hostile environment to exist.

Our best young soldiers and sailors today say without hesitation “I’d take a bullet for my brother.” Many of them, sadly, have done just that. No one should ever take a bullet from a traitor in the ranks.

This week, thankfully, hundreds of veterans from Iraq have passed through BWI. They’re given special Christmas cheer as they come home in time for the holidays. They are all volunteers. And the ones who welcome them home are all volunteers, too. It’s another reminder that Liberty is the most precious gift under our tree and that we are the land of the free because of the brave.

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The steel-cold eyes of Vladimir Putin have a way of unnerving his opponents.  When one of those happens to be the President of the United States, the latter might well feel a bit shaken.

Following their meeting, Mr. Obama reported, “On areas where we disagree … I don’t anticipate a meeting of the minds anytime soon.”  Welcome, Mr. President, to the real world.

This must be jarring for the former community organizer, whose utopianism was his presidential campaign’s stock-in-trade.  Shortly before his election in November 2008, he told a Missouri audience that “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

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The Carrie Underwood Christmas Special aired last week.  I was looking forward to it.  I put on my fuzzy slippers, dropped a couple of extra marshmallows into my hot cocoa, and snuggled up in front of the TV.  I couldn’t wait to hear her sing my favorite Christmas song, “O Holy Night”.  I reached for the Kleenex box.  One must be prepared for tears, especially when she hits that ever-famous note toward the end: “Diviiiiiiiiiine.”  I was like a kid at Christmas, bursting with anticipation.

So, you can imagine my shock, sitting there on the floor in my living room, staring at the TV, mouth agape, at the opening of the Carrie Underwood Christmas Special: Miss Underwood rises from under the stage in a throne-like chair, smoke swirling and lights flashing.  She’s clad in skin-tight, black leather from head to toe.  I didn’t know hair spray could get hair that high?  I didn’t know Christmas was about Carrie Underwood.  Male dancers (wearing only pants – yikes – and matching, black leather, of course) flanked her on all sides.  They all started dancing… err, more like flailing, all over the stage.  The song she sang (though, is it technically a “song” if it lacks a discernable melody?) was no more a Christmas song than fruitcake is cake.

I grabbed the remote and hit “OFF”.  Sigh.  “Speaking of fruitcake…”  I trot off to the kitchen.  I figure I’ll have better luck getting into the Christmas spirit with a slice of grandma’s fruitcake.  And that’s not sayin’ much.  Sorry, Grandma.

But, Christmas is about rejuvenation and re-birth, and last night, I got my second chance.  I was on the treadmill at the gym, of all places, barely eeking out that first mile.  (One too many marshmallows, apparently).  There were about eight TVs on the wall, each broadcasting a different channel.  “Let’s see, what can I watch to help me reach mile two?”  TV one: news.  Pass.  TV two: news.  Pass.  TV three: …what’s this?  I see a church sanctuary, brightly lit with candles and adorned with wreaths and garland.  A gospel choir is swaying back and forth.  I see Jennifer Hudson belting something out at a microphone.  Could it be?  I scrambled for my headset so I could listen.  They’re singing, “Silent Night!”

Alleluia!  Throughout the next forty-five minutes, I was delighted by one traditional, Christmas carol after the next.  No self-glorification or self-aggrandizement.  No dance choreography.  Not even any Rudolf.  Only the beautiful singing of the old, great Christmas carols and hymns.  Only the celebration of love, giving and family.  At one point, during an interview before a song, Jennifer Hudson tells us, “Jesus is the light of the world.”  Now this is a Christmas Special.  I was invigorated.  I looked down at my treadmill’s screen.  Five miles?!  I haven’t run five miles in at least five years!  (Okay, a decade, at least).

Thank you, Jennifer Hudson, for producing an appropriate, traditional Christmas special.  In an age where Christmas decorations are stripped from public buildings, and citizens are forced to take down nativity scenes displayed in their yards, I know I speak for many when I say, I appreciate you remembering Christ in Christmas.  And thank you ABC (did I actually say that?) for your bravery in broadcasting Hudson’s show.  And P.S., Miss Hudson, the note you struck in “Diiiiiiiiiivine”, was far more beautiful than Carrie Underwood’s ever could have been.

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Yes, the Nobel Committee gave its Peace Prize Barack Obama as a slam at George W. Bush and as a message to the United States that they like us best when we act more like a hand-wringing Uriah Heep (“I’m a very “humble man”) than a confident Ronald Reagan.

Yes, President Obama should have declined the award. A person with more humility and moral courage would have done so, although the temptation to accept it would be high for anyone.

Yes, he omitted any mention of our engagement in Iraq other than to say that our efforts there are “winding down,” and hypocritically mentioned that “the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait — a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression” without mentioning that the same consensus existed to remove Saddam in 2003-2004.

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In December, more than 170 countries are meeting in Copenhagen to talk about a world treaty to cut greenhouse gasses.  (A conference, ironically, that’s estimated to create 40,584 tons of carbon emissions—roughly the same amount that the entire country of Morocco generated in 2006).  Liberals are hoping to put the environment on the front burner before Denmark—but that might be difficult considering the political climate in America.

A recent Pew poll found that Americans don’t think global warming is a serious problem.  The number that do fell sharply—from 44% last year to 35% now.  Others are skeptical that climate change was even a problem to begin with!  That percent is bound to double or triple after scientists at the University of East Anglia admitted to “throwing away” raw temperature data to support their claim for global warming.  According to the U.K. Times, “The CRU is the world’s leading center for reconstructing past climate and temperatures.  Climate change skeptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled.  That is now impossible.”  This news, combined with ClimateGate and Americans’ doubts, should be more than enough to put off any international agreements on global warming indefinitely.  President Obama has agreed to make the trip to the conference to lobby for cutting emissions by 17% in 2020.  Given the revelations of disagreement in the scientific community and the growing skepticism in the public, the President should back away from a treaty that will cut U.S. jobs and raise energy costs for families.

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President Obama is said to be taking his time, carefully weighing all alternatives, “calibrating” our response to the situation in Afghanistan with precision and judgment. The point of all these statements is to reinforce the Obama administration’s theme that George W. Bush rushed off pell-mell and did not assess the situation properly before committing U.S. troops.

Not since the famed King Ethelred the Unready have we seen such a long, drawn-out, and public process of decision-making. Despite his name, however, this ancient English king was not called “the unready” because he was unprepared. The word comes from Middle English and means he was ill-advised.

That appellation certainly fits today. We have seen a succession of unconfirmed, unconfirmable czars comes and go. The latest departure has been Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director. She cited Mao Zedong as her favorite political philosopher. If any adviser in any conservative administration had listed some notorious mass murderer as a political model, the roof of the press room would have fallen in.

Now, part of President Obama’s delay must be attributed to the kind of advisers he has chosen and the kind of advice they are giving him. One of these, Bruce Riedel, recently spoke at Tel Aviv University. Riedel is a senior fellow at the liberal Brookings Institute and a former CIA official.

Riedel is telling the President that we are fighting a losing battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan and that with our forces bogged down there, we are incapable of responding militarily to the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon. “Israelis need to understand that there’s going to be a huge drain on resources, attention and capital [in Afghanistan], and that will have implications,” Reidel said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post.

Well. One has to wonder if Bruce Riedel has ever read U.S. history. In World War II, there were many who thought–for less than 24 hours–that we had too much on our hands fighting Japan to enter into a war with Nazi Germany. President Roosevelt responded with speed not just to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but also to Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war on the U.S.

To meet those combined threats, the United States had to resort to a draft. We eventually put in uniform one in every 11 Americans. (Today, that figure is less than one in two hundred.) America’s industrial capacity made us the Arsenal of Democracy. During the war, Britain tripled her output, excelling both Germany and Russia, who merely doubled theirs. Japan, incredibly, saw a four-fold increase in production. And America? The United States increased its war production twenty-five times.

Does Bruce Riedel, or any of President Obama’s timorous advisers, have any idea of the capacity for greatness that this country possesses? My diplomatic history prof, Norman A. Graebner, used to tell standing room only lecture halls that the United States was like the great boxer, Joe Louis.

We had power to spare.

If this nation’s life is threatened by murderous mullahs in Tehran, or by Al Qaeda harboring Taliban in Afghanistan, we can do what we have to do. Who else will protect us? The UN?

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So the emails the terrorist Hasan sent to a jihadist imam in Yemen were not deemed threatening? What if they were in code? American cryptographers succeeded in breaking the Japanese naval codes before Pearl Harbor. But they got messages like: “Climb Mount Iitaka.” How were U.S. intelligence officers supposed to know that that was the code name for the attack on the U.S. Naval Base in Hawaii?

Shouldn’t it be our policy that any contact between anyone in the U.S. and any jihadist abroad would be enough to bring the FBI swooping in? We should not care if our “person of interest” is asking the radical about the weather, or mountain climbing.

That’s what we would be doing if this administration were serious about the war on terror, which it is not. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the most liberal President before Barack Obama. But FDR was serious about our nation’s defense. When German-Americans came ashore planning to blow up electric power grids, Roosevelt had them arrested. He didn’t send them to Club Gitmo to read Mein Kampf under the palms. He had the captured saboteurs tried–in secret, by military tribunal–at the Washington Navy Yard. To make sure his Attorney General didn’t spend his time searching for new precedents on the civil liberties of would-be mass murderers, Roosevelt assigned Attorney General Biddle to lead the prosecution. The convicted terrorists were swiftly executed, by electric chair.

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News reports are informing us of the probable homicide of a federal Census worker in Kentucky.

And early reports are mentioning in conjunction with this likely murder the word “feds” hanging from a placard around the victim’s neck. AP coverage includes other anti-government violence–including the worst case of domestic terrorism prior to 9/11–the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. That bombing, for which Tim McVeigh was tried, convicted, and executed, claimed 189 lives, including the lives of several children in the day care center and one unborn child.

I was sent by Family Research Council president Gary Bauer to Oklahoma City to present a specially commissioned painting titled “American Pieta.” It is part of the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum. We wanted to express our concern and compassion for the good people of Oklahoma City who were victims of this senseless violence.

If you read between the lines of the story on the presumably murdered Census worker in Kentucky, however, you begin to see a story “line” emerging: Criticize federal government policies and this is what you get–murder.

Americans have a two-hundred year history of criticizing government policies. My mother’s family came from Kentucky. There’s considerable suspicion of federal officers–including “revenuers”–in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. Folk singer Joan Baez popularized a ballad sung by the moonshiners of those mountains back in 1962. Her song “Copper Kettle” hearkened back almost two centuries.

My daddy, he made whiskey,

And my grandaddy, he did too.

We ain’t paid no whiskey tax

Since Seventeen Ninety-two

President George Washington led an army into Western Pennsylvania in 1794 to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. It was the first dangerous test of the authority of the new federal government. Alexander Hamilton, who as Secretary of the Treasury levied the whiskey tax, and who was at Washington’s side as Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania militia marched against the Whiskey Rebels, said whenever the federal government appeared in force, it must appear “as a Hercules,” using overwhelming force to speedily suppress rebellion.

We must all remember the liberal media’s 1995 attempts to tar conservatives with the violence of Tim McVeigh. They never succeeded in finding even the remotest ties between McVeigh, his loner, loser cohorts, and any recognizable conservative group or movement. It was not for lack of trying.

At the time of his crime, and in 2001 when he went to his death, there was not a murmur of sympathy for Tim McVeigh among conservatives. How could there be? By commissioning that beautiful painting to remember the victims of Tim McVeigh, we demonstrated where our hearts were.

If we had sympathy for anyone else, it was for McVeigh’s hard-working, honest parents. They were the truly tragic figures and never deserved the sorrow they endured.

Today, we must be just as firm in rejecting any anti-government violence. The administration is advancing some of the most alarming policies we have seen in two hundred years. We have a right, we have a duty, to protest these policies as dangers to life and liberty. And in that pursuit, we will call for the speedy apprehension and trial of the perpetrator of this crime in Kentucky. We will urge stern justice for anyone convicted in this despicable crime. The answer to such situations rests–as it always has–not with bullets but with ballots.

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Yesterday, President Barack Obama addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations and called for the creation of a “viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967.”  There is so much wrong with this statement and so much danger encapsulated in it.  Aaron Klein (WorldNetDaily) provides key analysis of the speech in this piece.

Particularly alarming is this paragraph from Klein’s article:

Obama’s reference yesterday to “occupation that began in 1967” comes after a top PA official, speaking on condition his name be withheld, told WND earlier this week the Obama administration largely has adopted the positions of the [Palestinian Authority] to create a Palestinian state within two years based on the 1967 borders, meaning Israel would retreat from most of the West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem.

That could include the Temple Mount, but even if it does not – the term “contiguous” implies the creation of a large, solid block of territory that will not be easy to traverse by Israel in times of emergency.   It would occupy the center of what is now Israel.

President Obama has chosen to stand with the Palestinians, I think most Americans will choose to stand with Israel.  I know that I will.

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A report from the U.S. Geological Survey is giving birth to concerns about the decline in the fish population because of the feminizing of fish.  No, I am not talking about cross-dressing fish, but referencing what experts say is a widespread problem in which certain species of male fish are growing egg cells.

What’s behind this feminization of male fish?  Birth control pills.  Women’s birth control pills and other hormone treatments have made their way into the nation’s rivers through the sewer systems.  Birth control pills are not only the leading form of pregnancy prevention here in the U.S., but are often the tool of choice for the population control forces in third world countries.

The tragedy is that the population control message is most often promoted by the global warming crowd and others who view people as negatively impacting the environment and consuming limited resources.  In reality, it’s their efforts to reduce the population (people) that are actually destroying the environment (fish).

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Here’s a story we need to see. Roger Mason, Jr., a star shooting guard for the San Antonio Spurs, is shown in the Washington Times recently giving high fives to a group of boys at E.L. Haynes Public Charter School in Northwest D.C. Mason formerly played for the Washington Wizards, but left to join the Spurs last summer.

Despite moving more than a thousand miles away, Roger Mason has not forgotten his roots. His Roger Mason Foundation is a partner with the local charter school, and Roger is playing a part in the lives of area children. Fifty local students will attend “Movie Night with Mase” this week. They were selected on the basis of essays they wrote. Many of the kids wrote about Roger Mason and how he is an inspirational figure to them. “That means more to me than anything,” Mason told The Washington Times’ sports writer, Tom Knott, “that’s the cool part. That’s the type of thing that’s special to me.”

I am especially grateful to Tom Knott for giving us this wonderful story. Too often, the media highlight the lurid, the weird, the criminal. But Roger Mason is not just “quiet, steady, dependable Mason, the guy behind the guy but ever capable.” Roger is a star.

Roger Mason was a classmate of my children. He graduated from Calvary Lutheran School in Silver Spring, Maryland in the ’90s. He was a standout athlete—even in fourth grade! And he was quiet, modest and “ever capable,” even then.

Calvary Lutheran did beautiful things. All 123 children in that school read on grade level.

That is something few schools can boast. Teachers at Calvary had to teach for twenty-three years before they earned as much as an entry-level teacher in Montgomery County Public Schools. The amazing thing is that we had four teachers who were at that level.

I sometimes get ribbed by liberal friends about sending my children to Christian schools.

Oh, joining the “white flight,” eh? Well, we did join the white—and black—flight to Calvary, where 85 percent of the students were minority students. But we didn’t pay attention to that back then. Instead, we were drawn to those words engraved in stone above the entrance to Calvary: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

I thank God for Calvary Lutheran School, what it has meant to my family, and what it meant to Roger Mason. He continues to bless this community, San Antonio, and any other community that is fortunate enough to know him. Oh, and E.L. Haynes Public Charter School? It’s right down the street from Calvary.

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In Ronald Reagan’s 1989 farewell speech he inspired the youth in America to dream of change and pursue active leadership for the good of America.  “All great change in America begins at the dinner table,” Reagan told America. And he was right.

Yet as a college student, I am aware of how many of my contemporaries across this nation see little reason to devout themselves in the world of politics.  Millions of college students around the country would rather stay in their comfortable safe havens of youthful apathy then dare to engage the complex political world surrounding them.

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Is global warming the gateway to global governance?  Before you tune me out, those are not my words.  They are the words of Al Gore, the guru of global warming.

Recently in a speech in the United Kingdom, the former Vice President praised Congress for passing the Waxman-Markey “Cap and Trade” bill, saying “it was a step in the right direction.”  But he didn’t stop there.

Mr. Gore went on to say, “It is the awareness (of global warming) itself that will drive the change.  One of the ways it will drive the change is global governance and global agreements.”

His matter of fact candor belies repeated denials that embracing the proposed solutions to the global warming hype would lead to the loss of national sovereignty – among other things.   In the end, the effort to stop supposed global warming is about power, not people.  It’s a twisted view that says political power must be consolidated so that we can save the planet.

This reminds me of another group that consolidated their power to reach the heavens – at the Tower of Babble.  Whenever man thinks he can manage his own affairs without God, whether personally or through some form of global government or anything in between, confusion and disarray ensue – just like at Babble.

For more about the global warming debate, click here to listen to the audio of our important panel discussion, “Faith and Science in the Global Warming Debate.”  The experts on the panel were Dr. Calvin Beisner, Dr. Kenneth Chilton, Rev. Dr. Jim Ball, and Dr. Lowell “Rusty” Pritchard.

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In this secular age where “science” trumps all else, it is borderline blasphemy to question the inerrancy of scientists. However, since I received this revelation of scientific misconduct from FRC’s resident scientist, Dr. David Prentice, I assume I have standing to bring it to your attention:

One in seven scientists says that they are aware of colleagues having seriously breached acceptable conduct by inventing results. And around 46 per cent say that they have observed fellow scientists engage in “questionable practices”, such as presenting data selectively or changing the conclusions of a study in response to pressure from a funding source.

Apparently a number of scientists, who increasingly are helping drive controversial public policies, don’t walk on water after all. Just because a “scientist” said it is so, doesn’t necessarily mean it is so.

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He’s ba-ack! Fertility doctor Panayiotis Zavos now claims he created 14 cloned human embryos and transferred 11 of them into 4 women’s wombs, in hopes of a born clone. The claim was accompanied by a video, from an independent film maker, of Zavos supposedly doing cloning in the lab. While no clone pregnancies resulted, Zavos stated “the cloned child is coming.” Dr Zavos also said he has produced cloned embryos of three dead people, including a 10-year-old child called Cady, who died in a car crash. He said he did this in response to grieving relatives who wanted clones of their loved ones. In those cases, Zavos says he fused the human cells with cow eggs rather than human eggs, to create a human-animal hybrid “model” allowing him to study the cloning procedure. He noted “It’s a model for us to learn. First you develop a model and then you go on to the target. We did not want to experiment on human embryos, which is why we developed the hybrid model.”

Given the history of human cloning claims, we should be hearing more news soon. The tinfoil hat crowd includes the Raelians (who believe that the human race was cloned from aliens) and their claim that they cloned several children back in 2002, and fertility doctor Severino Antinori, who has also claimed success in creating born clones, most recently in March 2009.

There is no evidence to believe Antinori or the Raelians. But Zavos does warrant watching. Zavos is determined to succeed and supposedly has a long line of people eager to sign up for his cloning program, at a cost of between $45,000 and $75,000. Zavos first published a paper claiming an 8-10-cell cloned human embryo back in 2003, in the journal Reproductive Biomedicine Online. Since then he has been collaborating with Karl Illmensee, who has a long track record in cloning experiments dating back to pioneering studies in the early 1980s with mice. Illmensee also pioneered in the 1970s what has become the gold standard test for pluripotent stem cells–injecting a cell into an early embryo and following its development into various tissues in the born organism.

In 2006 Zavos and Illmensee published the claim of another cloned human embryo, which after reaching the 4-cell stage was transferred to a woman’s womb, though no pregnancy resulted. They also published a paper in Fertility and Sterility in 2006 claiming production of cloned cow-human hybrid embryos. And in 2007 Illmensee published a review article promoting human cloning. In that paper he quotes a 2001 survey indicating that “More than three-quarters of ART practitioners responding indicated that they would be willing to provide human reproductive cloning.”

A Brief History of Human Cloning

Beyond the claims made above, including published papers, there have been others who published claims of creating cloned human embryos.

In 2001 Advanced Cell Technology claimed that they had created cloned human embryos, that survived only to a few-cell stage.

In 2003 a Chinese group claimed success at producing cloned rabbit-human hybrid embryos.

Of course, there were the fraudulent claims of cloned human embryos by Hwang, published in the esteemed journal Science in 2004 and again in 2005.

In 2005 the British team of Stojkovic & Murdoch claimed getting one cloned human embryo (and no cells).

French, Wood and their group at Stemagen seem to have the only verifiable claim of cloned human embryos in 2008. For that experiment, Wood admitted he cloned himself.

In December 2008, a Chinese group claimed production of human cloned embryos (but no cells obtained from the embryos.)

In a March 2009 paper another Chinese group claimed production of several cloned human embryos. Despite their claim in the first sentence of their abstract, they went on to explain in the paper that they did not obtain any embryonic stem cells from the cloned embryos (maybe there was a problem in translation?)

ACT again claimed in 2009 that they had produced both cloned human embryos and cloned animal-human hybrid embryos (no cells were obtained from the embryos.)

Clone Envy

Stanford’s Irving Weissman may be jealous of Zavos. Weissman frothed and sputtered after Friday’s announcement of the draft NIH Guidelines on embryonic stem cell funding. Likewise William Neaves of the Stowers Institute in Kansas City is also no doubt jealous. The Stowers spent $30 million in Missouri in 2006 to pass a state constitutional amendment (Amendment 2) allowing human cloning.

Zavos, Weissman, Antinori, Neaves, and the Raelians all want cloned human embryos for their own purposes.

Isn’t about time to say “no clones”?
The United Nations in 2005 passed a Declaration to prohibit all human cloning. The U.S. should pass similar legislation, such as the Brownback-Landrieu bill and the Stupak-Wamp bill.

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Talk show host and author Tavis Smiley has written a new book called Accountable, which attempts to navigate the difficult waters swirling around the success or failure of Obama’s presidency. Smiley, who is African American, is quoted in the Washington Post today as saying that if Obama fails, “it may be another 400 years before we get another African-American president.” Smiley is at the center of a raging debate among African-American leaders about the limits of tough questioning of the new president and his policies, a debate in which Smiley has been in the minority as an advocate for treating Obama as a man and not merely a milestone. Smiley is on the right side of this debate, in my view, but his apocalyptic opinion that Obama holds the fortunes of African-American politicians in his hands only feeds into the mantra of those who regard Obama as an untouchable symbol. A failure of Obama’s policies would and should damage only those policies – massive expansion of government, nationalization of various parts of the U.S. industrial sector, international naiveté, and radical social liberalism – but that failure should merely pave the way for the election of someone of opposing views. There are a number of conservative African Americans of stature who have that resume, and the country could well elect one of them president before 4 — and not 400 — years have passed.

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For weeks the FRC Blog has been commenting on the growing prominence of CNBC as a national news outlet.  We have also commented on the liberal counter-reaction against the network.  Our point has been that even though the Left dominates the mainstream media (MSM), in a time of financial and economic crisis the MSM news organs are structurally ill-equipped to deal with stories of such complexity.  CNBC has on-air staff with the smarts and the career training to discuss these matters at a sophisticated level.  The MSM does not have people like this on their programs with a few exceptions (e.g., Lou Dobbs at CNN (who is not MSM)).   Consequently, there has been a tremendous power shift toward CNBC. 

CNBC is more conservative than the MSM, but it might be fairer to say CNBC is more libertarian and market-oriented.  That being said there has always been a good mixture of liberals and conservatives on CNBC, and many Wall Street players were Obama supporters. 

Well, the Left noticed the increasing prominence of CNBC and a campaign of mau mauing began quickly once Barack Obama became president.  First, Rick Santelli was attacked; this effort was assisted by NBC’s Today Show.  Jim Cramer was next, and his assault by Jon Stewart soon followed.  However, it appears that a larger effort to compromise CNBC is underway, and it may be working.  There is now an entire Leftist-”progressive” website devoted to serving up ideological attacks on CNBC: it is called “Fix CNBC.”  (Go to the website and look at the long list of liberal big-wigs who have signed on.  Amazing.  This is quite an effort.  I wonder who is paying for it?)  Interestingly, Media Matters also  presents an online petition at “Change CNBC,” and the language looks pretty similar to Fix CNBC’s petition.

Continue reading »

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