Global warming............IBD

"On April 24, the World Wildlife Fund published a study, based on last September's data, showing that Arctic ice had shrunk from 13 million square kilometers to just 3 million. What the WWF omitted was that by March the Arctic ice had recovered to 14 million square kilometers and that the ice cover around the Bering Strait and Alaska was at the highest level ever recorded".

Lebanon....."The government "will not surrender to Hizbullah's allies, Syria and Iran."

Victor Hanson

Bjorn Lomborg...........Global warming..........Money for Nothing

If countries in Europe stick to current projections, they will postpone global warming by just days and waste billions: why not spend that on aid now?


Using the Danish figures to calculate EU-wide costs, the total is likely to be more than €150bn annually, with every euro doing just half a cent worth of good. And this assumes that politicians pick the best options, and that oppositions don't try to out-do their governments.

The same money could triple the global development aid budget. It could easily provide clean drinking water, sanitation, education, and healthcare to every human being on the planet, while increasing CO2-reducing R&D 10-fold.


More at NRO


Dr. Roy Spencer......."But carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth, and I have a difficult time calling something so fundamentally important a “pollutant.” Maybe the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher now than it has been in hundreds of thousands of years. So what? I am increasingly convinced that its influence on climate pales in comparison to the influence that natural climate events like El Niño and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation have on regional climate. Indeed, most of the warming we’ve seen in the last century might well be due to these natural modes of climate variability alone.

The trouble is that no one has been funded by the government to investigate such a possibility, and the mandate for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to address manmade climate change — not natural climate change.

So, here we are with bad science ready to support bad policy decisions that will lead to bad economic times ahead, and no presidential candidate who is willing to ask the hard questions."

Andrew McCarthy......................NRO

Mark Levin Show - 6 - 8:00pm

Mark Levin Show

Crime beat..........mean streets............maybe politicians can blame the Americans for home grown crime

....or maybe they should face reality and realize there is a criminal element out there that doesn't obey laws and actually take effective action to deal with them.

Human Rights Code too vague......Alan Shanoff

"Look, I could go on, but isn't it clear that if we want to comply with all of the hate speech sections of the various human rights codes then we are going to have to rewrite all of our history textbooks? And who are we going to hire to rewrite these texts? Who among us is sufficiently politically correct and willing to accept that everyone's beliefs are worthy of equal protection so as to be qualified to rewrite history? Will we need a Ministry of Truth or a Ministry of Silliness?"

Human rights abusers hijacking United Nations..........Lorne Gunter

"In all, 10 members of the UN Human Rights Council -- more than one-fifth of its complement -- are from Freedom House's list of countries that have few if any freedoms."

Eye on the UN.......How human rights abusers become members of the UN's lead human rights body

Asia

"Lee Kwang Yew the elder statesman of Asia discusses issues ranging from Taiwan-China relations rendering support to China's views on Tibet&Taiwan. He reiterates his view of importance of economic growth and stable society over political aspirations"

MEMRI

"Iranian Papers on the Events in Lebanon: 'In the Power Struggle in the Middle East, There Are Only Two Sides – Iran and the U.S.'; As a Result Of Hizbullah's Victory, 'The U.S.'s Influence in the [Middle East] Region Will Stop, and the Regimes Identified With It Will Be Replaced'

Carbon Taxes

More here

Meanwhile....garbage in, garbage out

Dr. Tim Ball

WSJ
The problem is that once government creates an artificial scarcity of carbon, how the credits are allocated creates a huge new venue for political rent-seeking and more subsidies for favored industries. Some businesses will benefit more than others, in proportion to their lobbying influence and how well they're able to game the Beltway. Congress itself will probably take the largest revenue grab, offering itself a few more bites out of the economy and soaking politically unpopular businesses.

Then there's the question of whether any of this will even reduce greenhouse gasses

In science there is supposed to be peer review.What happens when when you try to completely shut out eminently credentialed scientists that have a different view ? Do you have science?

Michael Barone- rethinking the Iraq critics

"Unfortunately — and here Mr. Feith is critical of his ultimate boss, George W. Bush — the administration allowed its critics to frame the issue around the fact that stockpiles of weapons weren't found. Here we see at work the liberal fallacy, apparent in debates on gun control, that weapons are the problem rather than the people with the capability and will to use them to kill others.

The fact that millions of law-abiding Americans have guns is not a problem; the problem is that criminals can get them and have the will to kill others. Similarly, the fact that France has WMDs is not a problem; the fact that Saddam had the capability to produce WMDs and the will to use them against us was a problem."

It's 3:00 AM in Beirut

"What's going on in Lebanon at this hour is actually the overthrow of Lebanon by Hezbollah. The democratic Lebanese government will become a puppet government — an Iranian dream."

Obama- Facts trump charm..........IBD

McConnell charged that Obama and top Democratic leaders "get up every morning with three things on their minds: more taxes, more regulation and more litigation."

He added: "It's pretty clear to me that the Democratic agenda is to turn us into France."

McConnell, a longtime member of the Senate, also pointed out that the image of Obama as uniter and bridge builder is nothing more than a legend.

"I can't think of a single occasion" when Obama "has been involved with Republicans on any meaningful legislation," McConnell said. "He's a straight-line, big-government, high-taxing liberal."

Claudia Rosett- ..The Iranian Connection..................NRO