Couldn’t Help But Notice (011008)

President Bush needs to hold the pork, says John Fund:

Congress allocates money for nearly 9,000 new earmarks. But no law says Bush has to spend it.

….. What Mr. Bush knows, and Congress doesn’t want the taxpayers to know, is that the vast majority of the offending earmarks–the ones that aren’t part of the actual budget law and were instead “air-dropped” into the committee report–aren’t legally binding. A Dec. 18 legal analysis by the Congressional Research Service found that most of the committee reports have not been formally passed by both houses and “presented” to the President for signing, and thus have not become law. “President Bush could ignore the 90% of earmarks that never make it to the floor of the House or Senate for a vote,” says Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who has read the CRS report. “He doesn’t need a line-item veto.”

Federal agencies would still be obligated to spend the dollars appropriated by Congress. But they could use the money higher priorities that would benefit all taxpayers, rather than on favors for special interests or political donors.

This possibility led Old Bull members of Congress to call the White House, complaining that such a move would threaten its relations with the legislative branch and threatening retribution. But none of those complaints or threats were made publicly. Members know how unpopular earmarking is with voters, and they also know that Mr. Bush could easily turn the tables on them if they actually engaged in petty revenge over the loss of their budgetary toys.

The White House is at a crossroads. “If Bush were to do the right thing on earmarks it would an attention-getting precedent that could make other budget reforms possible,” says Alison Fraser, who heads up economic policy for the Heritage Foundation. “It’s a legacy-building moment.”

But if Mr. Bush blinks and issues a “recission order” that strips only the most egregious pork-barrel projects from the budget Congress sent him, it will be more than a lost opportunity. It will show that the power of the spending lobbies in Washington has grown so great that they can blithely ignore the Constitution and common sense as they go about their self-interested business.

Exactly. This should be seen as a crossroads moment. Mr. Bush needs to restock the testosterone and do the obviously right thing.

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Jeff Jacoby (HT One News Now) – There is no global warming:

Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 *didn’t* turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007’s global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 — and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to accumulate — it’s up about 4 percent since 1998 — the global mean temperature has remained flat. That raises some obvious questions about the theory that CO2 is the cause of climate change.

Jacoby’s point about worldwide temps not being at their peak is relevant as well when only looking at the US. In a previous story about US temperatures, after some misapplied mathematical machinations were exposed, it turns out that the warmest year ever was 1934.

Clarification: Jacoby’s article is referring to world temps. My linkback related to error corrections to US temperature data, and the previous paragraph was corrected to reflect that. Both Jacoby and the prior-post info debunk the idea that the world as we know is as warm as we’ve known it here and now. It clearly is not. Thanks to a commenter for pointing that out.

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Thomas Sowell remembers 1968, and not nostalgically.

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Terence Jeffrey: “Obama is the Most Pro-Abortion Candidate Ever” –

He is so pro-abortion he refused as an Illinois state senator to support legislation to protect babies who survived late-term abortions because he did not want to concede — as he explained in a cold-blooded speech on the Illinois Senate floor — that these babies, fully outside their mothers’ wombs, with their hearts beating and lungs heaving, were in fact “persons.”

BOOHOO (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama) doesn’t own the English language. These babies are persons, and those who would not protect them are accessories to murder.