Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, July 2008

1. Landstuhl. Senator Barack Obama spent last week on a Magical Mystery Tour (which we will discuss next) to the Middle East and Europe. While in Germany, he had the opportunity to visit the military hospital at Landstuhl. This is where the most seriously wounded soldiers spend time before being sent stateside for recovery. Unexpectedly, and at the last minute, he cancelled the visit with the wounded troops and spent the rest of the day shopping in Berlin. On the plane trip out, Obama campaign officials spent most of the flight spinning the rationale for the canceled visit to the wounded to the sycophantic press flying with them. Their basic story – and there were several versions given over the course of the following week - was that it was inappropriate to visit the wounded while on a campaign funded trip. Interesting statement, that. The rules for visits by politicians and others to wounded military in hospitals are pretty simple, well known and static: No campaign staff and no photographers (other than military photographers) allowed. The Obama campaign set up at lest three visits to the wounded during his trip: One apiece in Afghanistan, Iraq and Germany. After making the first two visits without photographers, Obama decided that if there were going to be no photos, there would be no visit. When asked, officials at Landstuhl said they didn’t know why the visit had been cancelled, as they were ready for the visit. One e-mail surfaced from a self-identified Captain at the installation that claimed the real reason for the cancellation was that no photographers and no campaign officials were to be allowed. The Captain quickly retracted the e-mail, saying it was based on faulty information and noting that it was private and personal communications between him and his family. The McCain campaign quickly st arted blasting away at Obama with charges that he was more interested in photo ops than showing concern and respect for the troops fighting this nation’s wars. The Obama campaign shot back with charges that John McCain, with his connections to the Pentagon forced the cancellation, which was laughable. Nice to see the real priorities of the presumptive democrat presidential nominee on display.

2. Magical Mystery Tour. A few interesting notes regarding the Obama world trip for your consideration. The highlight of the trip was a speech at Hitler’s Victory Column in Berlin to over 200,000 young Berliners. Come to find the crowd was set up much like the screaming crowd in Portland, OR last May, with the crowd gathered because of a free concert by a pair of local bands. Not only was there free music, but there was also free beer, and most of us will listen to political blather for a while if free beer is at hand. No news yet regarding who paid for the concert or the beer. For my money, the two most bothersome things about the world trip were the fawning media coverage and Obama’s incessant reference to his skin color. Throughout the trip, Obama was followed by a couple hundred reporters, including all three network anchors. Press events were staged. He was photographed playing basketball with the troops and hit a three-point shot (oh joy!). Eventually, the unquestioning support of the Obama campaign by the drive-by media is going to backfire on the democrats in general and Obama in p articular. Polling during the trip determined that a majority of all Americans viewed the media as giving favorable coverage of Obama – rather than objective media. The second thing that struck me was Obama’s observation during his Berlin speech that he didn’t look like other presidential candidates. As far as I am concerned, this is little more than a thinly veiled reminder of his race. There are those conservatives out there that believe electing Obama would shut down the race industry completely and for all time. I tend to disagree, for if race was not important, why would Obama be referring to his skin color in a speech? I tend to agree with Limbaugh, that should Obama be elected, we will be up to our ears in racialism – with every opposition to anything done by the new administration be painted as racist rather than principled opposition; a continual ad hominem attack on the opposition by the new administration. Obama even st arted hinting around at reparations to blacks in a speech given over the weekend upon his return. Race based stuff is incredibly corrosive to the body politic. And the democrats show no sign of backing away from what has elected a lot of them to office over the last century.

3. Edwards. Former democrat presidential candidate John Edwards was apparently caught by the National Enquirer a couple weeks ago coming out of a hotel room at 2 AM following time spent with a woman who is not his wife. The National Enquirer also has found that the woman has a baby. Implications of all this would be that Edwards has set up a second household in a LA hotel and is a Daddy yet again. The Enquirer has long been a vehicle that has supported the objectives of the Clintons via character assassinations on their political opponents. National Enquirer attacks on House members during the impeachment workup in 1996 and 1997 are legendary, taking out several Republican members of the House. Now they are going after John Edwards. Why? More interestingly, why has the drive-by media ignored the story? The LA Times, whose stock value continues to crater, has not run a single investigative report on the story. They have also prohibited all blog entries on it. This story may end up being more about the lockstep cover-up by the drive-bys than sexual indiscretions – real or imagined – of John Edwards. It is also important to note that Edwards still has delegates committed to him. Should he be taken out of political play via sexual peccadilloes, those delegates could potentially end up supporting Hillary Clinton at the convention and perhaps strengthen her hand as nominee. Is this a Clinton operation?

4. Pebble. We are in the final few weeks of an environmentalist campaign to shut down hard rock mining in Alaska. The vehicle is Proposition 4, a so-called Clean Water Initiative. It is aimed at the proposed Pebble Mine in the Iliamna region, a couple hundred miles west of Anchorage. On one side, we have the greens, local lodge owners, and commercial fishermen out of Bristol Bay, one of the poorest regions of the entire state. On the other side, we have the mining supporters, pro-development people, native corporations, and people who like development and jobs. The environmentalist lies have been spread thick and fast, and the ads are getting really nasty. Pebble, if dug, will extract a value of product in the range of what we have taken out of Prudhoe Bay since the pipeline was opened – hundreds of billions of dollars. The basic argument by the greens is that the mine will discharge pollutants into the local streams and kill all the fish forever, putting everyone who has a job connected with fishing statewide out of business. There is language in the initiative that prohibits a new mine from putting any measurable pollutants into the water. We can measure down to individual atoms these days, and it takes a lot of atoms to kill a fish. This provision alone is a vehicle to use the courts to shut down all discharges of anything into every bit of flowing water statewide. And as usual, it is based on faulty science and ignores natural events. The problem with pollutants is not whether or not they can be detected, but how much of them are present and for how long. There is a recent example in the Bristol Bay region, the proposed location of the Pebble mine. The area is bounded by the Alaska Range on the east. The range is studded with volcanoes, nearly 20 within a couple hundred miles of Bristol Bay. In 2005, one of these mountains, Mount Chiginagak, emptied over half the contents of a highly acidic crater lake downstream. The discharge of hundreds of millions of gallons of sulfuric acid enhanced lake water scoured all life from a small lake at the headwaters of King Salmon River. King Salmon River empties into the southeast portion of Bristol Bay, in the Ugashik District. If you follow the logic of the greens, this sort of discharge into the local waters should have wiped out all fish and fishing jobs throughout the region, as it was huge, catastrophic, noxious, toxic, and irreversible. Yet if you look at the ADF&G commercial fishing summaries for the last three years, after a small dip in total catch in 2005 (perhaps due to the discharge, perhaps not), the year of the discharge, total catch has increased over the last couple of years. It appears that Alaskan salmon are highly tolerant of sulfuric acids and noxious pollutants. They have to be, to thrive in an area thick with active volcanoes. On the other hand, the hard rock mines have gotten good enough at water cleanliness that they are now stocking trout in their tailings ponds. This isn’t that hard to do. I hope the miners and natives are successful. We will see how sick and tired people are getting of environmentalist blather.

1. Fannie Mae. We are learning a couple of things with the financial difficulties of federally backed mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. The first is that public private p artnerships remove market forces – consequences - from the companies, allowing them to make financially unsound decisions without fear of failure. The second is that they become dumping grounds for political cronies, much like Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac became dumping grounds for well-connected democrat insiders from the Clinton administration who used the mortgage institution as a vehicle to get very rich while. Jamie Gorelick, Vice Chairman of Fannie made over $26 million for five years’ work on the Board. Former Clinton Budget Director Franklin Raines earned over $90 million at Fannie. Together, the two companies carry over $5 trillion in mortgage debt. What happened? They got involved in lending money to people who could not pay their mortgages – the sub-prime mortgage mess. When the sub-prime mess st arted percolating through the industry and mortgage companies st arted failing, Fannie and Freddy no longer were getting paid back for the mortgages they had bought and sold. As a result, their stock prices over the last month or so have fallen by over 50%. Congress, p articularly the democrats in the senate and both p arties in the House, has been completely derelict in their duties and now see the solution as more regulation rather than more market forces. David Frum in the National Post on July 11 and Robert Novak in his July 17 column described the mess and how it came to be. Note that the two committee chairmen in congress – Chris Dodd (D, CN) in the senate and Barney Frank (D, MA) – have consistently stood in the way of real marketplace based reforms for both institutions. We the taxpayers are about to be put on the hook to back $5 trillion dollars in poor financial decisions. Solution? Complete privatization of both companies would be nice. At least Bear-Stearns went bankrupt, as did Countrywide. Should the management and oversight of Fannie and Freddy behave in a financially irresponsible manner, they ought to suffer the marketplace consequences of that behavior. How do we get from here to there? I don’t know. But I do know we must go there sooner rather than later.

2. Oil Prices. President Bush took off the gloves with the democrat majority in congress and announced that he would repeal the Executive Order prohibiting oil exploration and development on the outer continental shelves. Oil futures, which had ratcheted up through $147/bbl dropped sharply as a result, falling to around $129/bbl by weeks’ end. So much for the notion that production will not have an impact on prices, for prices fell nearly 12% on the threat of more drilling. Congress, with their 9% approval rating, is now on the hook to complete the deal and open offshore, ANWR and oil shale for exploration and drilling. Another congressional excuse for not drilling is that nothing would come on line for a decade. That’s what they said in 1995 when Bill Clinton vetoed legislation that would open the 1002 area of ANWR for oil exploration. Those million barrels per day would sure be nice to see coming down the pipeline right about now, wouldn’t they? Interestingly, there are known oil reserves sitting off the California coast of around 10 billion barrels, much of it with platforms and wells already in place. I have seen recent estimates of getting this production online within a year. Of course both Governor Schwarzenegger and much of the democrat-heavy congressional delegation strongly oppose this, but the issue is larger than California. Up here in Alaska, the feds announced lease sales of another four million acres of know oil reserves. The area may hold over 8 billion barrels of known reserves. Of course, the greens are typically outraged and promise to continue to file lawsuits citing environmental damage should the area be opened for exploration and production. We need not be dependent on nations that hate us for over 70% of our oil and natural gas. We need to st art producing our own. The current shortage is artificial, a government induced shortage that has been a generation coming. It can be solved very, very quickly if we remove the current infestation in congress and replace it with a new infestation.

3. Trails. Eagle River is a suburb of Anchorage that sits about eight miles north of town. It is located on either side of Eagle River in a rather spectacular river valley. Homes and roads wind their way up the hillsides. It is surrounded on the east, like much of the Anchorage Bowl by the Chugach State Park and Chugach National Forest. The local McClatchy fishwrapper, the Anchorage Daily News ran a story Friday about a new trail that would connect Eagle River High School with surrounding homes. Trail planners are looking at building about six kilometers of new cross country ski trails, connecting them with five kilometers of existing trails. ADF&G biologists are predictably outraged, aghast at the notion of putting additional ski and recreation trails near the school and Eagle River because they will be using the same pathways as local brown bears. The article was written from the perspective of these out of touch state employees, darkly warning that there would be more maulings of children and the trail advocates would be at fault. Local residents rightfully point out that the damn bears are everywhere these days, that the state is not doing anything about them, and they are no longer going to be making decisions about what land to use and what land not to use based on how many bears there are on it. Sounds like the locals in Eagle River, much like the locals here in the Anchorage Bowl are st arting to take things into their own hands and make the bear problem go away. In a related story, there have been 17 bear shootings here in Anchorage this year, which puts us on pace for a record year. There are an estimated 250 bears within city limits, so there are only 233 left to turn into rugs and wall hangings.

4. Boating. We conservatives pay a real price in liberty when we stay home and turn over the government to the leftists. One such example is the Clean Boating Act now slithering its way through congress. The legislation aims to control discharge of all substances into lakes, rivers and oceans. Under it, if you are out on a privet boat, catch fish, clean that fish, and hose off the waste into the water, you will be subject to EPA regulation and permitting. Improvement in the overall environment and cleanliness of the waters? Who knows? Loss of liberty? A bunch, for does not fish waste belong in the water where the fish can eat it, especially if is used as bait? ADN, Sun.

5. Tongass. Yet another set of timber sales in the Tongass National Forest, yet another series of environmentalist lawsuits. The excuse this time is that logging will harm the habitat of local deer populations, creating problems for the wolves and hunters. Nice of the greens to be concerned about the hunters, eh? The timber sales have progressed through the Environmental Impact Statement portion of the process. The greens take exception with the conclusions, and claim that estimates of deer populations are all wrong. As usual, nobody has actually gone out and counted deer or wolves. On the other hand, we do know the number of hunters down there and we do know what they are bringing home, and there are no restrictions on hunting due to low deer numbers that I know of, so my guess is that the deer population is just fine and green claims of ecological disaster are bogus (as usual). We will see what the courts have to say. With any luck, the decision handed down by 11 members of the Ninth Circus in an Idaho timber sales case will hold precedent. The opinion was handed down in late June, and overturns a 3-judge opinion that second-guessed the conclusions of the federal timber managers. Basically, the opinion threw out the greens’ complaint, noting that judges are not scientists and ought not to be in the business of second guessing managers who have done everything congress has required of them. ADN, Sun., Capital Press, July 3, 2008.

1. Yellowcake
2. Iranians
3. Greenpeace
4. Black Hole
5. Chukchi
6. Bison
7. Congress

1. Yellowcake. The US completed removal of over 550 tons of uranium yellowcake from Tuwaitha in Iraq sometime earlier this year. The yellowcake ended up in Canada and the US compensated the Iraqis for their loss. There was sufficient uranium to produce over 100 nuclear weapons. History of this stuff is interesting, as it was all discovered during the first Gulf War and sealed (we think) by the IAEA so Saddam no longer had it available for his use. Loss of the use of this yellowcake by Saddam was the reason he was dealing with Niger in the years between the first and second Gulf Wars, trying to get another source of the materials for his nuclear weapons program. What does this all mean? It means that Saddam had a nuclear weapons program. He had over 550 tons of yellowcake – materials to produce nuclear weapons on hand and in his labs. He lost the use of that material and tried to get some more. It means that President Bush didn’t lie at all about yellowcake or Niger. It means that the Joe Wilson – Valery Plame claims of nothing going on in Niger were completely false. Hot Air, Mon.

2. Iranians. Iran conducted yet another set of war games last week. This one included mass firings of surface to surface missiles from transporters. The exercise was accompanied with all the usual bluster and threats. Charles Johnson caught the Iranians photo shopping a photo of four missiles leaving the launchers simultaneously. One didn’t leave the ground in the original photo. Following the mass launching, Pentagon spokesmen reiterated that there were no plans for immediate hostilities with Iran. However, I expect the plans for removing Iran from the Persian Gulf have already been written and will be executed quickly once the time comes. Iran’s only card in their poker game with the West is a threat to shut off oil traffic through the Straits of Hormuz, into and out of the Persian Gulf. They tried it before, in the late 1980s, when the Navy blew the majority of the Iranian Navy out of the water over the course of a couple months in the Tanker Wars. I am sure the Iranians have learned something over the last couple of decades. But we have also. Should anything exciting happen, I do not think the action will be confined to the water. I expect it will spread out a bit to the coastal towns and naval bases in those towns on the Iranian side of the Gulf. I also expect we will take the Iranian oil platforms in the Gulf and turn off the oil flow to Iran. Tankers will move quite nicely through Hormuz. The Mullahs ought to use some caution poking this p articular Big Dog with a sharp stick. They may end up losing an arm or two.

3. Greenpeace. In 2004, a Greenpeace boat working to shut down logging in the Tongass was cited for not having a spill plan on file. Greenpeace fought the citation and took it to court, claiming that because they were greens, the rules they imposed on everybody else didn’t apply to them. The jury thought otherwise, and convicted the Captain of criminal negligence. In 2005, the trial judge set aside the conviction and the fine. The state appealed that decision and last week a state appeals court reinstated both the conviction and fine. Nice to see the rules fairly and regularly applied to all players.

4. Black Hole. The racial spoils, grievance and victimhood business has taken over even in Dallas. Last week and argument over ticketing paperwork exploded into the blogs when a Dallas County Commissioner decided to be offended when a colleague called a county office that had a real problem with losing paperwork a black hole. Apparently a black hole is now a racially sensitive term rather than a scientific term. The offended p arty immediately demanded an apology and st arted calling the office a white hole, which in physics is the opposite of a black hole – an object that spews mass and energy. Next on the list of things we no longer can say are the following terms: black death (bubonic plague); black sheep; devil’s food cake; blackout; blackberry; blackjack; etc. Thanks for Michelle Malkin in covering this foolishness last Friday.

5. Chukchi. National greens, not content with forcing the price of gasoline above $4 per gallon, continue to use the legal system to obstruct oil exploration and production. The latest set of lawsuits was filed against recent oil exploration leases in the Chukchi Sea to the west of Alaska. The feds announced rules that would allow oil companies to chase off the occasional walrus or polar bear in their search for oil. This is not good enough for the greens, who believe we must be completely transparent in all our dealings with nature. The rules require the oil companies to report all sightings of walrus and polar bears during their work, which is used by Fish & Wildlife Service as a valuable research tool, as they are not manned to watch all the area under their jurisdiction on a continual basis. The areas in question were recently leased by three oil companies for $2.6 billion – which means that they believe there is a lot of oil / natural gas in the offshore areas. ADN, Weds.

6. Bison. Alaska Dep artment of Fish & Game (ADF&G), fresh off their stunningly success management of bears across the state, have sm artly moved on to the next event. Now that there are more bears that we know what to do with and knowing that their numbers will continue to increase dramatically in the future due to refusal to allow citizens of Alaska to hunt them, we are left with the problem of what to feed them. Solution from ADF&G? Why, they have imported over 50 wood bison from Canada and are going to create a number of self-sustaining herds of bison throughout the state. What a wonderful meal for marauding brown bears – herds of 2,000 pound herbivores. The actual excuse for this little experiment in animal management was that wood bison used to be native in the state, though there haven’t been any for nearly a century. What a great thing for the wildlife biologists to muck around with. Not content with their mismanagement of moose populations across the state (there are twice as many in the Anchorage Bowl as the land will support; other p arts of the state have far too few), and mismanagement of bear populations statewide (far too many bears in close contact with humans), they want to introduce new animals to play with. If you can’t or won’t do what you have been hired to do, why bring something else into play? ADN, Weds.

7. Congress. As the per-gallon price of gasoline and diesel continues to climb, congressional approval polling continues to crater. Gasoline here in Anchorage is running around $4.40/gallon. Diesel is just under $5/gallon. Congressional approval numbers a couple weeks ago were at a historic low of 13%. Last week that number sunk to just 9% approval. We have truly reached the time where ‘con’-gress is the opposite of ‘pro’-gress. The Stupid P arty has a real opportunity in front of them with energy. Sadly, senate Republicans announced last week energy legislation that did not include opening ANWR for exploration. Mitch McConnell’s (R, KY) office said that they were going to concentrate on opening the outer continental shelf this time around. We have a lot of conservative candidates out there that ought to be hammering the notion of self-sufficiency of this nation in energy as the most important issue this year. While Americans have long complained about congress, few congressional majorities have ever survived with approval numbers this low in an election year. We have a real opportunity this November to replace the current majority in both houses of congress with a new group of idiots. They have made it very expensive on us all over the last couple of years by standing idly by and allowing fuel and energy costs to double (gasoline and diesel). Time to remove them from the political gene pool.

1. Bears. Anchorage had its first brown bear mauling in memory a week ago, as a 15 year old in Far North Bicentennial Park who was taking p art in a 24-hour long mountain bike race was attacked and mauled to within an inch of her life. Readers of this column ought to remember my increasing displeasure and alarm with the growing numbers of brown and black bears in and around the Anchorage Bowl. I have been warning that people and bears do not mix well, and someone will get hurt. Well, that just happened. And what is the State of Alaska doing about it? What is the Alaska Dep artment of Fish & Game (ADF&G) doing about it? Nothing, absolutely nothing, other than defending the bears from hunting and removal. The mauling took place along a local stream in the park. Salmon are now present in the stream and over the years, the unchecked and unhunted number of brown bears feeding on the salmon has skyrocketed to over 20 brown bears frequenting the very small and mostly urban area. Note also that the area is a popular ski, skijoring, mountain bike, jogging and recreation area year round. The wildlife guys blamed the problem on ADF&G Sportfish, which controls fishing along the stream. The self-serving, not my fault logic is that if the fish aren’t there, neither will the bears be there. Even the Municipal Parks and Recreations guy got into the act, claiming that there is no proof that there are more bears present in the Anchorage Bowl today than in previous years, despite what the citizenry has been saying for years. But the facts belie claims by the state and local guys. Bear hunting in the surrounding state and national forest east of Anchorage has been all but shut down for the last 30 years. Over that time, the bear population has continued to grow. Old bears make young bears, which are pushed down the mountains and into town by the old boars (who will otherwise kill and eat them). Over the last generation, we have seen an ever increasing number of bears here in town. ADF&G has refused to do anything about them, opting instead to manage the people by imposing restrictions on bird feeders, telling us when we can take our trash out, and placing other restrictions – along with tickets to enforce those restrictions – on homeowners and the general public. The government, as governments almost always do, has pursued policies that end up making all our lives less safe, less free, and more dangerous. Under existing laws, we simply can’t blow away a threatening animal here in town and call ADF&G to recover the carcass. And the biologists at ADF&G kill very few problem animals every year so the trend line in total bear population always increases. The state employees also get to define what a problem animal is and what it is not. This is the largest city in this p art of the world, with over half the population of the state. We have elderly and people in wheelchairs just like other cities nationwide. I have always thought that eventually there will be a bear that decides some oldster in a walker or some handicapper in a wheelchair is little more than a slow moving meal in a fancy food holder, and do what bears do. With the mauling last week, we got one step closer to this outcome. As usual, with political problems, there will be political solutions. And a population that has given away the power to manage the large wildlife to the State of Alaska in return for public safety will quickly take that power back when public safety is no longer being delivered. I expect there to be a number of brown bears shot and the carcasses left in various p arts of Anchorage over the course of the next several months. I also expect this problem to end up being yet another campaign issue for statewide elections in November and Municipal elections next April. If the bureaucracy refuses to solve the problem they have allowed to metastasize and grow, perhaps the politicians will provide some better guidance. If the politicians refuse, the public will take care of the problem by alternative means in a very short period of time. ADN, Sun.

2. Solar. The current energy crunch gives us yet another vehicle by which to smoke out the greens embedded in the regulatory world and identify them and their superiors for all to see. The latest dust-up comes out of the bureau of Land Management (BLM), which halted for two years all new leases for solar energy projects on federal land pending completion of environmental impact studies. In other words, there are companies out there that figure they can now make money generating solar energy, want to lease federal land (mainly in the West and Southwest where there is plenty of sunlight) to set up plants, and the greens at the BLM are tying them up in paperwork to obstruct, deny and delay the new projects. How many years have we heard from these very same greens that we must immediately get off fossil fuels and use renewables, with solar being defined as one of those renewables? Well, that move has begun, the marketplace is st arting to speak, and the greens don’t want the move to solar energy made. They are now using the bureaucracy to bury the solar entrepreneurs in environmental paperwork – just like they do to loggers, oil people, miners, nuclear energy and coal miners. BLM imposed their moratorium a month ago, and triggered a blistering reaction from the entrepreneurs, congresscritters and the general public. Last week they abruptly lifted the moratorium and announced that they will st art accepting and processing proposals for new solar energy projects. According to a NYT article from July 3, BLM has received over 130 new applications for solar energy projects in the West and Southwest, requesting leases on over a million acres of desert. Of course, the greens in the bureaucracy didn’t backtrack very far, promising to complete their comprehensive environmental impact statements on all solar energy projects on federal land anyway. Given their current position, I do not expect the outcome of that work to be p articularly supportive of new energy development in the west.

3. Kennedy. The current swing vote on the SCOTUS is Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has moved increasingly leftward with his opinions over the years, p articularly in the 5-4 votes. Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion last month that determined that execution of child rapists was cruel and unusual punishment, invalidating state laws in Louisiana and several other states. The excuse he used for this travesty was the evolving national consensus against capital punishment. As it turns out, he missed something during his time on Mount Olympus. He missed the direction of the evolving national consensus toward execution of child rapists, not only at the state level, but at the federal level as well. The entire system blew this one, as congress passed legislation in 2006 that modified the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and included capital punishment for child rapists who were members of the military. None of the ten briefs filed in the case mentioned this legislation. The Solicitor General even missed it. And the SCOTUS majority missed it. When congress passed legislation, it is by definition a national consensus of sorts – whether our black robed masters like it or not. The SCOTUS majority now looks like a bunch of overreaching, grasping, social engineering idiots. It took a military justice blog to catch the error, which was then researched by Patterico and Captain Ed at Hot Air. The state of Louisiana now has grounds to request the SCOTUS reconsider their opinion, as the opinion was based on a national consensus that does not exist. We will hope they take advantage of this opening, request reconsideration, and embarrass the five self-serving, social engineering fools in the SCOTUS majority a bit. There are two other tidbits on this one. First, the state of Louisiana responded immediately to the opinion by passing legislation requiring chemical or physical castration for child rapists. The second is to recall exactly how Anthony Kennedy managed to find himself on the SCOTUS bench. He was the third choice of the Reagan WH after Ted Kennedy and a democrat majority in the senate successfully executed their character assassination of Judge Robert Bork in 1987. So this opinion, like all 5-4 opinions that undermine the rule of law, the constitution, the separation of powers, and usurp powers to the SCOTUS that were never intended for the SCOTUS, can be laid at the feet of Ted Kennedy and the democrats who followed his lead in 1987. Bork wouldn’t have done this. A lesser man did.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found at the following locations:
The Alaska Standard http://thealaskastandard.com/
MatSu Valley News http://www.matsuv alleynews.com
District 28 http://www.dist28.com/
subscriber and supporter Elbert Collins at http://thatselbert.wordpress.com/
and the home page: http:/ /home.gci.net /~agimarc
Rod Martin's The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column: http://www.thevanguard.org/

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