Right to Opine

Mona Charen, Townhall — The Free Lunch Is Back

WSJ — The Amazing Obama Budget

Michelle Malkin — Reminder: 2013/2014 Budget Projections From Same Administration That Underestimated 2012 Deficits by 138 Percent

Hot Air — OMB chief: The sequester is so important to us that we replaced it, or something

BBC — Mormons baptise parents of Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal

Having apologized for this baptism, the Mormon leadership has highlighted a glaring inconsistency. If proxy baptisms are—as the cult has long taught—an essential part of the LDS beliefs, how can one apologize for them or agree to exclude entire groups based on their ethnic or religious identities? After all, Mormonism is the “correction” to orthodox Christianity and Judaism, right? Either what you are teaching is right, or it has been wrong all along.

Investor’s Business Daily triple:

• Obama’s Chickens Come Home To Roost In Egypt
• With All The Volts Counted, Taxpayers Lose Again
• Walter E. Williams — Black Community Responsible For Its Young People

Carolina Journal — Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Replaced with Cafeteria “Nuggets”

Viral Footage — Ted Nugent Crushes Piers Morgan

Thomas Sowell, IBD — The Progressive Movement’s Discredited Legacy

Yet another incisive piece. Long and worth the time!

Michelle Malkin — ‘To Stop the Multiplication of the Unfit’

A timely look at the roots of—and ongoing disgrace that is—Planned Parenthood.

Matt Barber, Townhall — Obama’s Anti-Religious Implosion

Robert Kagan, WSJ — Why the World Needs America

Miami Herald — Justice Breyer robbed at West Indies vacation home

It’s a shame he was defenseless. No, wait…Breyer doesn’t believe in the right to self-defense.

NY Times — Greek Parliament Passes Austerity Plan After Riots Rage

The Left in America would do well to pay heed.

Emily Miller, Washington Times — Obama’s dire second-term pitch

Cassy Fiano — Choosing Life and Beating the Odds: Accepting Down Syndrome

Mike Adams, Townhall — Extremism in Defense of Equality

Project Veritas demonstrates again why we need voter ID laws:

Hot Air — Two more scientists change sides in the AGW debate

Thomas Sowell, Townhall — A Defining Moment  

WSJ — A Fairness Quiz for the President

Weekly Standard — Dem Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper: I Wouldn’t Have Voted for Obamacare If I’d Known About HHS Regulation

You mean you actually trusted Obama? At least you have company under that bus.

The pre-fight:

• CBS — Catholic League Poised To Go To War With Obama Over Mandatory Birth Control Payments
• Telegraph — Roman Catholic leaders criticise Barack Obama over healthcare

“We Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees and suffer the penalties for doing so,” wrote Alexander Sample, the Bishop of Marquette.

Or you could do what you should have done years ago—stop blindly voting “D” at every level. You’ve gone to bed with the pro-abortion party for years. Did you really think they wouldn’t come after you when they had the power and opportunity? If there’s one thing statists cannot abide it’s competition, and through your charitable work you compete directly with them.

NY Times — Romney’s Returns Revive Scrutiny of Lawful Offshore Tax Shelters

Do you notice how there’s not really a story here, only the intimation that Romney has somehow done something wrong? As far as anyone can tell, he’s broken no laws and has simply exercised his legal right to pay as little to a wasteful federal government as possible—exactly as any of us would do given the opportunity. Nothing but a smear, but what more can be expected from the NYT?

You really have to love the NY Times. Their latest lament is that America is, apparently, out of touch with the rest of the world when you compare our Constitution with those of other nations.

Other nations routinely trade in their constitutions wholesale, replacing them on average every 19 years.

Yes, they do. Repeat after me, “Stability is a good thing.” America became a great nation because its founding principles are, in fact, timeless. Is our Constitution perfect? Probably not, and it certainly wasn’t as it was originally written. The founders knew that, and so included a mechanism for making changes. The fact that those changes are hard to make, however, has been a great benefit rather than a hindrance.

The rights guaranteed by the American Constitution are parsimonious by international standards…

I actually had to read that a few times. Parsimonious? Then I saw what was missing just a few sentences later:

But the Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect, at least in so many words, a right to travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and health care.

Yes, I see. Americans are terribly restricted in our ability to travel. Huh? And since when are we not guaranteed the “presumption of innocence” in court? It’s one of the pillars of our legal system and always has been. Then comes the kicker: entitlements. A country that is fighting an increasing epidemic of obesity lacks an “entitlement to food”? Really? The left is so preoccupied with what we are “entitled” to that it entirely ignores our responsibilities.

And then, of course,

It has its idiosyncrasies. Only 2 percent of the world’s constitutions protect, as the Second Amendment does, a right to bear arms.

That, in the end, is what guarantees our liberty. So long as Americans can arm themselves, the government cannot exert unlimited power over us. This is no small freedom.

To be fair to the authors, they concluded with a powerful and unrebutted counterpoint by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:

“Every banana republic in the world has a bill of rights,” he said.

“The bill of rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours,” he said, adding: “We guarantee freedom of speech and of the press. Big deal. They guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protests, and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. Whoa, that is wonderful stuff!”

“Of course,” Justice Scalia continued, “it’s just words on paper, what our framers would have called a ‘parchment guarantee.’ ”

Yeah, I really wish our country were more like Canada. It’s a great model of individual freedom and freedom of speech. I’ll take the liberties enshrined in our founding documents, thank you.

Walter Williams, Townhall — Obama’s Racial Politics

CNN — Eric Holder’s ‘Fast and Furious’ woe

BBC — Freezing weather in Europe kills at least 60 people  

CNET — How Republican opposition derailed SOPA and Protect IP

Investor’s Business Daily — Catholic Bishops Reject Obama’s Surrender Terms

The Vote Pump:

Townhall — Obama Builds the Wrong Car

The truth is, Mr. President, America simply doesn’t want the cars you’re pushing—and wasting our tax dollars on.

Thomas Sowell — Fearful GOP Party Bigwigs Sabotage Gingrich Campaign

WSJ — Why Europe Isn’t Growing

AP — Occupy protest rekindles debate about flag-burning

Ricochet.com — The Conversation With a Florida Tea Partier That Should Scare Every Republican

Watts Up With That? — Bitter cold records broken in Alaska

When you have an agenda, you can never let facts get in the way of your conclusion. NASA’s most visible global warming alarmist, James Hansen, is banging his drum again with the assistance of a compliant media. As reported by Wendy Koch of USA Today,

The Hansen-led study, published in the December issue of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, said the magnitude of the Earth’s energy imbalance is fundamental to climate science. If the imbalance is positive and more energy enters the system than exits, the Earth warms. If the imbalance is negative, the planet cools.

His conclusion?

This provides unequivocal evidence that the sun is not the dominant driver of global warming.

Assume, for the sake of argument, that this is correct—that the energy imbalance described by the report has a greater effect on global temperatures than the sun. The problem is that, while the imbalance predicts warming, we haven’t seen any for the last decade or so, even as CO2 levels have risen.

Ms. Koch tries to refute this fact, but facts are hard to refute:

On the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page, 16 scientists recently said there’s no need for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy. “Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now,” they wrote without providing data.

Not so, according to U.S. government records. In December, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that all 11 years of the 21st century so far (2001–2011) rank among the 13 warmest in the 132-year period of record.

[Note the italics and links are hers.]

She opens with a smear of the scientists who wrote the WSJ piece. While it’s true that they provided no data, they didn’t need to. It’s widely and publicly available. Her insinuation that these scientists’ claims are unsupported by facts is truly a below-the-belt blow. Consider some of their identities, which she conveniently omits:

• Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; Crafoord Prize for geology, Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London, Gold Medal of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
• J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting
• William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University; Alexander von Humboldt Award, Herbert P. Broida Prize, Davisson-Germer Prize, Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award
• William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology
• Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; American Meteorological Society’s Meisinger and Charney Awards, American Geophysical Union’s Macelwane Medal, Wallin Foundation’s Leo Prize
• Rodney Nichols, former President and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences
• Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service
• Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva

Not exactly a bunch of yahoos. Yes, I realize that appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, but it’s important for the reader to know that there are some rather eminent scientists in the list. Fortunately, Ms. Koch supplies the necessary data in her next link, simultaneously displaying either an ignorance of what the data show or a willingness to hide it.

First note that while the scientists in the WSJ point out that warming has been absent for more than a decade, Koch replies with a standard global warming talking point about the last 11 years being among the warmest on record. That’s not a rebuttal. It’s a non sequitur. The point made was that global temperatures aren’t increasing. Koch either doesn’t understand the difference—in which case she’s ignorant of logic—or she does but thinks you’re not smart enough to notice her sleight of hand.

Now consider the following sequence of numbers: 0.54, 0.60, 0.61, 0.56, 0.64, 0.59, 0.58, 0.50, 0.58, 0.64, 0.51. Would you characterize the sequence as increasing or decreasing? Well, a least squares analysis tells us the slope of a line approximating those data points is -0.0024, so the numbers are ever so very slightly decreasing.

Why am I boring you with a math exercise? Those numbers are the published deviations (from the NOAA report Koch cites) of the annual global temperatures from 2001-2011 from the average for the 20th century (in degrees C).

Global warming alarmists are insisting we dismantle our economy in order to combat a threat that can quickly be shown to be non-existent using their own data. Global CO2 emissions have increased significantly over the last decade as emerging economies like India and China have ramped their use of “dirty” energy sources, primarily ultra-evil coal. Global temperatures have not increased—they’ve flat-lined.

Do us all a favor and check the agenda at the door.

Mark Steyn — The State of Our Union Is Broke: Obama calls for more of the unaffordable same.

Michelle Malkin — The SIGA scandal: Calls for investigation mount

Yep, the most ethical administration ever.

Mike Adams, Townhall — A Black Man Can

WSJ — What the Bible Teaches About Capitalism

An interesting perspective from a rabbi.

What do you call someone who owns at least one vehicle, home entertainment and game systems, a computer, and has cable TV and a cell phone? In much of the world, “wealthy.” In America, apparently, “poor.”

Investor’s Business Daily triple play:

• Media Act As Though Only Republicans Misbehave
• When Global Warming Freezes Over
• ‘Mack Plan’ Cuts Pennies To Slash Trillions In Budget

Naked D.C. — Obama says you wouldn’t succeed without government, so you’re welcome.

UK Daily Mail — Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again)

American Thinker — MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell gets his facts wrong

Deconstructing his blast against Republicans on racial issues.

Neal Boortz — An America divided

Washington Times — Obama’s crony capitalism: Friends of the president are given billions in government largesse

and

Heritage — Soros May Benefit From White House’s Natural Gas Proposal

Nothing quite like Chicago-style backscratching.

Forbes — Warren Buffett’s Secretary Likely Makes Between $200,000 And $500,000/Year

Oh, the irony. Leave it to Obama to trot out one of the 1% as his big example of how unfair the tax system is. And how about having his own staff pay their taxes:

Hot Air — Great news: The “fair share” administration owes over $800,000 in back taxes

Investor’s Business Daily triple play:

• CNN Turns Blind Eye To Obama-Alinsky Ties
• Government Accounting Is Like Lemonade Stand Economics
• Blocking Keystone XL Is Bad For Canada, Too

Michelle Malkin — Obama’s Green Robber Barons

Walter E. Williams, Human Events — Schools of education

John Ransom, Townhall — Unions, Buffett, Robber Barons and Cronies Now Have Our Oil, Oh My

Thomas Sowell, National Review — Is Anybody Serious?

WSJ — The Buffett Ruse: Obama’s ploy means the highest capital gains tax rate since 1978.

Karl Rove — Channeling David Axelrod

Not usually a fan of Rove, but this one had me snickering.

Real Clear Politics — The Hyper-Partisan President

NY Post — Adding up to nothing: O’s fast talk on the economy

MSNBC — Cops: Man, 65, kills teen who knocks him off bicycle

Jim Brady and the rest of the anti-CCW crowd would rather see a 65-year-old man be the victim of these thugs.

National Review — Ballot-Box Zombies

But requiring voter IDs is racist!

CNN — Obama pushes clean energy theme in Nevada, Colorado

Obama called his energy plan an “all-out, all-in, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy.”

At this point does anyone really believe this line?

CNET — U.S.-backed battery firm Ener1 seeks Chapter 11 bankruptcy

Why did the company fail? Low demand for electric vehicles. Duh. They’re EXPENSIVE! You know, when someone finally gets around to writing a book about the incredible failure of Obama’s brilliant “green economy” plan, it will have only one long chapter…11.