Here are some examples of Executive Orders issued by President Obama that have received New York Times or Associated Press coverage:

• NYT, October 29 — “Obama Order Strengthens Spy Oversight” (the browser window title is “Obama Moves to Roll Back Bush Changes to Intelligence Oversight Board”).
• NYT, October 2 – ”Obama Prohibits Federal Employees From Texting While Driving for Work.”
• NYT, March 10 – ”Obama Lifts Bush’s Strict Limits on Stem Cell Research.”
• AP, October 5 – ”Obama Puts Gov’t on Greenhouse Gas Diet.”
• AP, November 10 – ”US starts effort to boost hiring of veterans” (the window title at the Boston Globe is “Obama encourages federal hiring of veterans”).

Here is an Executive Order (Number 13524) issued last week that, based on searches at the Times (on “Interpol” and “executive order” in quotes) and the AP (“interpol“; “executive order” in quotes), respectively, has not been covered:

AMENDING EXECUTIVE ORDER 12425 DESIGNATING INTERPOL
AS A PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION ENTITLED TO
ENJOY CERTAIN PRIVILEGES, EXEMPTIONS, AND IMMUNITIES

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words “except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act” and the semicolon that immediately precedes them.

Uh, this seems a little more significant than a ban on texting.

Given the obsession news organizations and Congress had with certain provisions of the Patriot Act and supposed invasions of privacy during Bush 43′s presidency, it’s more than a bit outrageous that an Executive Order such as this would go unaddressed by both groups, especially when you see exactly what it does to Ronald Reagan’s original EO 12425 of 1983 as it has stood since it was amended in 1995 (the italicized text represents what Obama’s EO removes):

International Criminal Police Organizations

By virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and statutes of the United States, including Section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (59 Stat. 669, 22 U.S.C. 288), it is hereby ordered that the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), in which the United States participates pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 263a, is hereby designated as a public international organization entitled to enjoy the privileges, exemptions and immunities conferred by the International Organizations Immunities Act; except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act. This designation is not intended to abridge in any respect the privileges, exemptions or immunities which such organization may have acquired or may acquire by international agreement or by Congressional action.

President Clinton’s EO 12971 in 1995 had already removed the following bracketed text from Reagan’s original — ["the portions of Section 2(d) and Section 3 relating to customs duties and federal internal-revenue importation taxes,"].

The point of this post is that if the establishment media were interested in performing their public watchdog function, someone in the press somewhere would have reported on the issuance of this EO. Instead, it was first noted by blogs and real watchdog groups. Andy McCarthy’s cite at the Corner is how I learned of it.

I’ll leave discussing the possible merits, demerits, and implications of the EO to commenters.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

This Is How Tyrants Think and Operate Update, from Andy McCarthy at the Corner:

You just can’t make up how brazen this crowd is. One week ago, President Obama quietly signed an executive order that makes an international police force immune from the restraints of American law.

…. (On December 17) for no apparent reason, President Obama issued an executive order removing the Reagan limitations. That is, Interpol’s property and assets are no longer subject to search and confiscation, and its archives are now considered inviolable. This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States.

McCarthy does not exaggerate. The EO’s exact wording is (bold is mine):

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words “except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act” and the semicolon that immediately precedes them.

President Reagan’s original EO text, modified with Obama’s new deletions, now reads as follows (bold is mine):

By virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and statutes of the United States, including Section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (59 Stat. 669, 22 U.S.C. 288), it is hereby ordered that the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), in which the United States participates pursuant to 22 U.S.C. 263a, is hereby designated as a public international organization entitled to enjoy the privileges, exemptions and immunities conferred by the International Organizations Immunities Act; except those provided by Section 2(c), the portions of Section 2(d) and Section 3 relating to customs duties and federal internal-revenue importation taxes, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act. This designation is not intended to abridge in any respect the privileges, exemptions or immunities which such organization may have acquired or may acquire by international agreement or by Congressional action.

So Obama got rid of ALL of Reagan’s exceptions, making INTERPOL a fully privileged entity (i.e., “appropriate” to Obama means “full”). An almost up-to-date list of “Public International Organizations Entitled To Enjoy Certain Privileges, Exemptions, and Immunities” is here.

What compelling, undisclosed, undiscussed, undebated, unexplained need motivated this action?

A key point, followed by a conclusion, at Threatswatch:

Section 2c of the United States International Organizations Immunities Act is the crucial piece.

“Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable.”

In light of what we know and can observe, it is our logical conclusion that President Obama’s Executive Order amending President Ronald Reagans’ 1983 EO 12425 and placing INTERPOL above the United States Constitution and beyond the legal reach of our own top law enforcement is a precursor to more damaging moves.

Unless someone has a defensible alternative conclusion, I would say that’s the default. Even if the conclusion is wrong, the move itself is damaging enough.

Update, December 26: At Patriot Room — “INTERPOL the only police authority entity exempt from S&S (search and seizure) under 1945 Act”

Update 2, December 26: From the “imagine that” Dept. —

Though the expression “modern day SS” sounds like a hyperbolic metaphor, an examination of Interpol’s roots shows that it is, in fact, more literally true than that.

I was in Europe in 1973 when an expose was published, revealing that many, if not all, of the presidents of Interpol from the late 1930s or early ’40s until at least 1972 were Nazi Gestapo and SS officers. Reinhard (”The Hangman”), Heydrich (also head of Nazi SS Intelligence Service) and Gestapo chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner. By 1942 Interpol was consolidated with the Nazi Central Police, run by the Gestapo. As the Nazis invaded cities throughout Europe, police files from each were seized and evidently integrated into Interpol’s files. In 1972 the sitting Interpol President was Paul Dickopf, former Nazi SS officer (SS #337259).

The source on this? The Simon Wiesenthal Center. Simon Wiesenthal is pretty much the most famous of the post-war Nazi hunters, having impressively thorough files.

…. Interpol are not the good guys. Nothing good can come from giving them any domain at all in our country.

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Polling news at Rasmussen (HT Gateway Pundit):

• Obama’s strong approval vs. strong disapproval is 25% v. 46%, yielding a “Presidential Approval Index” of -21%, his worst yet.
• Bush 43′s strong disapproval in early January, just before he left office, was 43%.
• “For the second straight day, the update shows the highest level of Strong Disapproval yet recorded for this President. That negative rating had never topped 42% before yesterday. However, it has risen dramatically since the Senate found 60 votes to move forward with the proposed health care reform legislation.”

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More Globaloney refutation (HT Roger Simon), with a troubling implication (internal links added by me) –

Cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), both already implicated in depleting the Earth’s ozone layer, are also responsible for changes in the global climate, a University of Waterloo scientist reports in a new peer-reviewed paper (PDF).

…. “My findings do not agree with the climate models that conventionally thought that greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, are the major culprits for the global warming seen in the late 20th century,” (University of Waterloo professor of physics and astronomy Qing-Bin) Lu said. “Instead, the observed data show that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays most likely caused both the Antarctic ozone hole and global warming. These findings are totally unexpected and striking, as I was focused on studying the mechanism for the formation of the ozone hole, rather than global warming.”

His conclusions are based on observations that from 1950 up to now, the climate in the Arctic and Antarctic atmospheres has been completely controlled by CFCs and cosmic rays, with no CO2 impact.

“Most remarkably, the total amount of CFCs, ozone-depleting molecules that are well-known greenhouse gases, has decreased around 2000,” Lu said. “Correspondingly, the global surface temperature has also dropped. In striking contrast, the CO2 level has kept rising since 1850 and now is at its largest growth rate.”

In his research, Lu discovers that while there was global warming from 1950 to 2000, there has been global cooling since 2002. The cooling trend will continue for the next 50 years, according to his new research observations.

Lu’s Selected Publications (31 listed) and Conference Abstracts (22 listed) page is here.

Here’s the troubling implication:

• CFCs were widely used for a while.
• The science supported the idea that CFCs were depleting the ozone layer (Update: See Comment 2 below; even that’s not necessarily clear).
• Despite initial industry objections, industry came around, and CFCs were banned.
• The foundation of the ability to ban them was based on the supposed credibility of the science.
• The man-made/anthropogenic global warming (AGW) alarmists spent up to two decades creating bogus, not-credible “science,” covering their dishonest tracks, and attempting to intimidate and silence critics in support of what became a political cause (or was one all along) instead of a legitimate scientific pursuit. (Added at 7:45 p.m.) They have NO credibility. Climategate’s body of evidence has destroyed it. It can’t be recovered, at least by the crew that has been involved up to now.
• When the next valid scientific claim such as the danger of CFCs requiring change in how things are made or done comes along, the skepticism will likely be higher. That’s because the fundamentally dishonest, character-assassinating AGW alarmists — assisted by others who for decades have questioned the validity of any scientific findings solely on the basis that they don’t like the people who funded the work — have seriously poisoned the well of presumptive scientific credibility.
• Too-slow reaction to valid concerns may cause harm that otherwise would not have occurred.

As brilliant as Phelim McAleer’s globaloney-debunking work has been, I believe his film’s title (“Not Evil Just Wrong“) understates the globalarmists’ treacherous mind-set and its potentially harmful long-term consequences.

From Brentwood, New Hampshire, and many other places:

December 20, 2009 2:00 AM

The cancer that has riddled Jordyn Boucher’s blood since she was 15 months old is progressing.

Santa made a special trip to Brentwood last week so Jordyn’s family could celebrate Christmas before they traveled to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., where Jordyn will receive a bone marrow transplant from her father, Brian.

Jordyn’s family is praying for a Christmas miracle. But for many other cancer patients, Jordyn was their miracle.

One of them is Cary Hill, a 39-year-old father of two from China Grove, N.C.

Hill was never one to go to the doctor for anything. He fought what he thought were flu symptoms for more than a week, but on March 19, 2006, the pain was just too intense. He went to the doctor hoping for some medication to make him better. Instead, he was told he was within 24 hours of having a massive heart attack because the number of white blood cells in his body was off the charts.

Hill had acute lymphoblastic leukemia and a 15 percent chance of surviving. A stem cell transplant and chemotherapy treatments were ordered and Hill’s life changed forever.

“The doctor said it was important that this transplant happened immediately,” said Hill, now 42. “I had never been sick in my life. It was very scary.”

Nine hundred and fourteen miles north, Ned Raynolds, a Portsmouth city councilor at the time, read a story about a family living in Stratham that was holding a bone marrow drive with the hope of finding a match for their 5-year-old daughter Jordyn. A 41-year-old father of three, Raynolds reacted like many other parents.

“At the time one of my daughters was close to Jordyn’s age …; I saw the picture of Jordyn and thought, ‘that could be my daughter,’”‰” said Raynolds. “I found out, hey, that could be me.”

Raynolds was one of more than 1,000 people who became part of the Be The Match Registry of the National Marrow Donor Program because of Jordyn’s story. Many came — from throughout New England — but not one was a match. Still, at least six people who became part of the registry in February 2006 were matched with other cancer patients across the country. The six are only the people who have contacted Jordyn’s family afterwards. There are likely many more.

As it turns out, Raynolds was a perfect match for Hill. Graft-versus-host disease is a common and serious complication in which there is a reaction of the donated marrow or cells against the patient’s own tissue. But Hill just got better and better. A year later, he was given Raynolds’ contact information, if he wanted to call and say thank you.

“I told him I was 100 percent. He got real teary. I told him I really appreciated what he’d done for me. I said if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be here today,” said Hill. “It seemed like we knew each other after we kept talking. He’s like a brother to me now.”

“It was an amazing feeling,” said Raynolds. “It was originally the thought of perhaps my 5-year-old being stricken with cancer and wanting other people to donate to save her. Instead, I saved another father and saved his family from losing him. That has been very meaningful.” ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

In an item time-stamped at 1:16 p.m. today (in case updated, here is a graphic capture of the first six paragraphs as they then appeared) covered by yours truly a short time ago (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the Associated Press’s Jeannine Aversa discounted today’s weaker than expected economic growth report from Uncle Sam showing that gross domestic product only grew by an annualized 2.2% during the third quarter (two months ago, that growth was thought to have been 3.5%.

Not to worry, Aversa said, because the fourth quarter is going to be really good (“[possibly] the strongest showing since 5.4 percent growth in the first quarter of 2006″), and the first quarter of 2010 will be okay (“growth will slow to a pace of around 2 or 3 percent in the first three months”). To be fair, she did entertain the possibility of a double-dip recession in 2011 in her 18th of 21 paragraphs. But of course most readers won’t get that far, and most editors trimming her piece down will leave it on the cutting room floor.

Strangely, Aversa made no attempt to hide her near gloom in a dispatch time-stamped at 2:22 p.m. (first section graphically saved here), barely an hour after her paean to fourth quarter growth.

It’s also more than a little odd that after years of the establishment media telling us that the future of the economy as we know it depends on a robust Christmas shopping season, Aversa tells us that this time it’s really no big deal:

Strong economic rebound depends on more than Santa

Don’t count on holiday shoppers to fuel the economic recovery.

…. Even if holiday sales exceed expectations, the broader recovery is expected to remain weak – for the rest of the year and beyond.

…. usually as recoveries begin, the economy roars to life as pent-up spending is lavished on cars, clothes, homes and appliances. Consumers become an engine of economic strength.

Not likely this time.

…. Despite the glimmer of optimism on the surface … the economic fundamentals are weak,” said Sung Won Sohn, economist at California State University’s Smith School of Business.

Many economists do think the economy is growing faster now than it did last quarter. JPMorgan Chase Bank, for instance, has bumped up its forecast for growth this quarter from 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent.

…. But that’s no thanks to consumer spending, which is forecast to slow compared with last quarter. Growth is instead being driven by companies restocking shrunken stockpiles of goods.

Yet that benefit could be fleeting.

…. The economy isn’t usually this weak early in recoveries.

…. As long as consumers and small businesses remain unable or too cautious to borrow and spend – during and after the holidays – the recovery is likely to make only fitful gains.

How odd, considering that Aversa’s 1:16 p.m. GDP report waved around the possibility of 5% annualized fourth-quarter growth under our noses:

The economy is probably growing at nearly 4 percent in the October-to-December quarter, analysts say. A few peg it closer to 5 percent. If they’re right, that would mark the strongest showing since 5.4 percent growth in the first quarter of 2006 – well before the recession began. The government will release its first estimate of fourth-quarter economic activity on Jan. 29.

Whether it’s bias or something deeper, you’ve got to admit that it’s a long way from “Recovery likely strengthening after weaker 3Q” to “The economy isn’t usually this weak” barely an hour later.

If there’s an explanation for this outside the realm of psychiatry, it may be that Ms. Aversa wants to be able to cite items such as her later report and say, “See, I’m perfectly fair!” — knowing full well that her coverage of today’s GDP result will be much more widely used by AP’s subscribers than any analysis she attempts.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Economic Analysis today revised economic growth in the third quarter downward a second time. After originally estimating annualized growth of 3.5% in October and then reducing it to 2.8% in November, the bureau’s “third estimate” issued today came in at 2.2%.

If that “third estimate” term seems odd, it’s because this is only the second quarter the BEA has labeled its reports “first estimate,” “second estimate,” and “third estimate.” Previously, the respective terms for the three monthly reports were “advance,” “preliminary,” and “final.”

If you’re thinking that today’s BEA figure is bad news, you obviously haven’t gotten the word from Associated Press reporter Jeannine Aversa, who after a brief “not to worry,” seemed to wax almost rhapsodically over how great the current quarter and next year will be (a partial screen cap of Aversa’s first six paragraphs is saved here for future reference, fair use, and discussion purposes; bold is mine):

Recovery likely strengthening after weaker 3Q

All signs suggest the economic recovery will end the year on firmer footing despite a report Tuesday that the economy grew at a 2.2 percent pace in the third quarter, less than previously thought.

The Commerce Department’s new reading on gross domestic product for the July-to-September quarter was weaker than the 2.8 percent growth rate estimated a month ago. Economists had predicted this figure would remain the same in the final estimate of the quarter’s GDP – the value of all goods and services produced in the United States.

The main factors behind the downgrade were that consumers didn’t spend as much, commercial construction was weaker, business investment in equipment and software was softer and companies cut back more on their stockpiles of goods.

Based on the recitation in the bolded paragraph, that may leave artificial and unsustainable government efforts like the so-called stimulus and Cash for Clunkers as the only reasons why there was any growth at all. Whoopee.

Continuing, we find Aversa reporting on fourth quarter guesstimates, and cites another government stimulant as an important factor:

And many analysts still think the economy is on track for a better finish in the current quarter. One sign was a separate report Tuesday that home resales surged last month to their highest level in nearly three years, thanks to an extraordinary level of federal support. The report added to evidence that the housing market, which led the country into recession, is on the mend.

The economy is probably growing at nearly 4 percent in the October-to-December quarter, analysts say. A few peg it closer to 5 percent. If they’re right, that would mark the strongest showing since 5.4 percent growth in the first quarter of 2006 – well before the recession began.

…. Much of the third quarter’s growth was supported by government stimulus spending. The Cash for Clunkers rebates and a tax credit for first-time home buyers buoyed sales of cars and homes. The clunkers program ended in August, though the tax credit has been extended and expanded beyond first-time buyers.

Aversa waited until the 18th of her 21 paragraphs for her reality check:

It’s unclear how much the recovery might weaken once the government withdraws stimulus programs put in place to combat the financial crisis and the recession. If consumers pull back on spending, the economy could tip back into recession. Economists at Capital Economics predict the recovery will slow, with the economy’s growth fading to just 1.5 percent in 2011.

Today’s GDP report really reinforces the point so many sensible observers from the Wall Street Journal to Investors Business Daily to yours truly (not necessarily in that order :–>) have been making for quite some time. A Journal editorial puts it most succinctly:

The …. biggest problem is that Congress and the President have erected the biggest overhang of economic policy uncertainty that anyone can remember.

As long as that overhang remains, it’s likely that actuals will continue to underperform expectations, and that reporters like Jeannine Aversa will have to reach ever deeper into their wells of false enthusiasm.

Graphic found at LostWackys.com.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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UPDATE: Fox News carried Aversa’s report, and did a much better job with the headline —

Economic Growth Not as Strong as Thought in Third Quarter

In connection with the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending monstrosity signed into law last week, an unbylined AP report on December 16 told us the following (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Most Republicans opposed the bill, citing runaway federal spending. They also pointed to an estimated $3.9 billion for more than 5,000 local projects sought by lawmakers from both parties.

The AP writer involved did something even the worst football quarterback couldn’t pull off, namely committing two incompletions in one attempted sentence.

First, though there’s always the question of genuine sincerity when it comes to a Democrat speaking out against spending, three Democratic senators did make strong statements against the bill, specifically Evan Bayh of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. In a December 14 item at Politico, which seems to be the place where stories noticed by the establishment media that should go further instead go to die (while the rest of the press says, “See, ‘we’ covered it. It’s at Politico, so the rest of us can leave it alone”), Bayh was quoted as saying that “are totally out of touch with the sacrifices middle-class Americans are making.”

Second, where did the term “local projects” come from? It seems to be “creative” formulation to facilitate moving away from using the perfectly fine traditional labels of “earmarks” and “pork.”

The AP seemed to fumble around a bit before settling on a preferred term it can employ to avoid using those two suddenly dreaded words.

Blogger Doug Ross first noted the AP’s new evasiveness, citing Andrew Taylor’s December 12 report on the spending bill’s progress. Taylor tailored his terminology thusly:

(The bill) wraps together six individual spending bills and also contains more than 5,000 back-home projects sought by lawmakers in both parties.

How innocuous.

A day later, in a brief unbylined summary of the bill’s provisions, the AP betrayed its squeamishness about using the proper wording:

- $3.9 billion for more than 5,000 “earmarks,” or home-state projects sought by lawmakers.

Hey guys, they really are called “earmarks.” There’s no need for scare quotes.

On December 14, AP reporter Jim Abrams, in an item about the Senate’s passage of the bill, then modified Taylor’s “back-home projects” term further to make it appear even more benign:

Republicans decried what they called out-of control spending and pointed to an estimated $3.9 billion in the bill for more than 5,000 local projects sought by individual lawmakers from both parties.

Based on the December 16 AP item noted at the beginning of this post, it looks like the wire service has settled on “local projects” as the term of choice. Since AP dispatches are a primary driver of most of the news you see, hear, or read, its apparently newly-honed terminology will likely work to ensure that “pork” and “earmarks” disappear from most news reports — at least while Democrats control Washington. After all, what kind of meanie could oppose something as sweet and innocent as a local “project”?

One element of the various AP reports is sadly true, according to a watchdog group spokesperson I spoke to this morning. He hasn’t run the numbers yet, but he has no reason to believe based on what he’s seen and work they’ve done in the past to believe that the allocation of the “5,000 local projects sought by lawmakers from both parties” is anything other than the traditional roughly 60% going to the party in power and 40% to the minority party.

Clearly, almost nobody in Washington gets it, including the President, whose press secretary claimed that 5,000 earmarks represents “progress.” Obama signed the bill, which also gave most federal bureaucracies increases that far exceeded inflation (described by Abrams as “increased budgets for vast areas of the federal government”), despite his January pledge to eliminate earmarks.

Unsurprisingly, no AP report I located referred to Obama’s broken post-election promise.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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UPDATE, Dec. 24: Picked up at Liberal Whoppers.

This Is How Tyrants Think and Operate:

• Erick at RedState — “Senate Sets Up Requirement for Super-Majority to Ever Repeal Obamacare.” Specifics: “Reid has slipped in a provision into the health care legislation prohibiting future Congresses from changing any regulations imposed on Americans by the Independent Medicare Advisory Boards, which are commonly called the ‘Death Panels.’” That’s only a mild overstatement. It would require a 2/3 majority to make a change, which might as well be a prohibition. To make it happen, Reid defied the Rules of the Senate and hundreds of years of precedent. Read the whole thing.
• Washington Times, December 17 (HT to an e-mailer) — “…. dirty deeds may have been employed to hide extensive involvement in the affair (the firing of Inspector General Gerald Walpin) by the office of first lady Michelle Obama, whom the White House months earlier had announced would play “a central role in the national service agenda.” …. White House aides reportedly cut short congressional staff questioning of Mr. Solomont when the line of questioning began to lead to Mrs. Obama.”
• Byron York — “Who’s responsible for the Senate’s middle-of-the-night vote?”

Update: John David Lewis at Pajamas Media (“Arbitrary Power, Dictatorship, and Health Care”) frames the fundamental question —

Does a law or a bill constrain the power of officials — both elected and appointed — by the principles of the law? Or does it empower the officials to define the meaning of the law as they wish, to apply it in an open-ended manner, and to write regulations in order to expand their power?

The latter, clearly undemocratic choice represents how regulatory bodies have been empowered since FDR began going in that direction in the 1930s. The health care bill not only exponentially expands those powers beyond FDR’s wildest, aggressively socialist dreams, but as noted in the first item above, it severely restricts elected legislators’ ability to rein them in. The bill’s 100-plus new bureaucracies would be bastions of arbitrary power acting as de facto dictatorships over their prescribed domain. In fact, as designed and as insulated from accountability, their strongest competitors will be their bureaucrat fellows at other agencies.

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This is what tyrant-apparatchik wannabes do, via Lawrence Solomon: “Wikipedia’s climate doctor.”

It’s far worse than Solomon’s title indicates (HT Matt Sheffield at NewsBusters):

The Climategate Emails describe how a small band of climatologists cooked the books to make the last century seem dangerously warm.

The emails also describe how the band plotted to rewrite history as well as science, particularly by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period, a 400 year period that began around 1000 AD.

The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment of the most widely read source of information in the world — Wikipedia — in the wholesale rewriting of this history.

…. U.K. scientist and Green Party activist William Connolley …. took control of all things climate in the most used information source the world has ever known – Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003, just when opposition to the claims of the band members were beginning to gel, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world’s most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.

All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.

Connelley is (hopefully was) Wiki’s climate science censor, not its doctor.

It seems that everything the promoters of globaloney have touched, they’ve corrupted. These people are modern-day scientific and intellectual Luddites.

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From the “Wish There Were 48 Hours in a Day” Dept. — Among the recipients of honorary degrees at the University of Cincinnati’s graduation ceremony on December 12 was Phillip R. Cox.

Cox, a former chairman of UC’s Board of Trustees, says he played football at Xavier University and graduated from XU in the late 1960s. In December 2007, Bill Sloat at the Daily Bellwether learned from school officials that, in Sloat’s words, “he attended the school, but is not a graduate.”

That’s only a warmup. Earlier this month, a blog called UC Academic Fraud Protest called attention to the XU discrepancy and other issues relating to Cox’s publicly claimed credentials and resume in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent UC from issuing him the honorary degree. If even a quarter of what is documented there is true, Cox is a world-class resume enhancer, and shamed the school even further than he already has by accepting the plaudit.

From Reading, Pennsylvania:

Originally Published: 12/21/2009

When heart attack fells 55-year-old at work, folks at Teleflex Medical stay cool, save him

Michael J. Senishen woke up in a hospital bed at St. Joseph Medical Center on Nov. 10, oblivious to the previous 24 hours.

A nurse peered into his bleary eyes and said, “Mike, you’ve had a bad heart attack.”

Bad, indeed.

Mike, who’s 55 and lives in Reading, had 100 percent blockage in an artery. He was rushed to the operating room, where surgeons performed an angioplasty and implanted a cardiac shunt to keep the artery open.

What he was hearing, Mike thought, somehow didn’t make sense. He didn’t smoke, didn’t drink alcohol and wasn’t overweight. He worked out six days a week, pumping 100-pound weights at World Gym in St. Lawrence.

“To call it shock and disbelief would be an understatement,” Mike said. “You think it won’t happen to you, then boom.”

But the initial shock was nothing compared with what Mike would discover as he filled in the gaps of his memory.

To his utter and everlasting astonishment, amid this season of birth and renewal, Mike would discover he had been given the gift of life.
(more…)

Based on comparing the goings-on in Washington, DC and Columbus, Ohio during the past week:

• Democrats, accompanied by large amounts of taxpayers’ money if necessary, decide who among them will have to cast unpopular votes that will advance their own agenda.
• Republicans, for free, decide who among them will have to cast unpopular votes that will advance the other party’s agenda.

This is why there’s a Tea Party Movement, why it avoids Democrats like the plague, why it is generally keeping its distance from so many Republicans, and why both parties had best be wary if the TPMers coalesce into a coherent third party.

As statist health care, death panels, and government-paid abortion on demand (just give it time, because we must not forget that killing pre-born babies is a “fundamental right”) all loom, Mark Steyn echoes my thoughts almost exactly (internal link added by me):

You can’t even dignify this squalid racket as bribery: If I try to buy a cop, I have to use my own money. But, when Harry Reid buys a senator, he uses my money, too. It doesn’t “border on immoral”: It drives straight through the frontier post and heads for the dark heartland of immoral.

But no, Mark, it isn’t “heading there.” It’s smack dab in the middle of that “dark heartland” already.

Harry Reid, with the cooperation of his fellow senators, has no right to steal from me to give money to Ben Nelson’s Nebraska, or Mary Landrieu’s Louisiana, by having different rules under what is supposed to be the same federal program (Medicaid) for different states.

This isn’t how representative government works. It is how tyrants work to satisfy their more “clever,” more greedy fellow travelers.

This Senate fiasco proves once again that the “progressives” who thought they would improve the Senate with the 17th Amendment a century ago failed to do so by not including a recall provision, and should never have pursued it without one.

P.S. I suppose to be consistent, Ohioans should be asking Sherrod Brown why he didn’t pretend to oppose statist health care so he could collect “our” bribe.

P.P.S. Another Cash for Cloture bribe — “A Whodunit: The $100 million mystery hospital.”

P.P.P.S. Also, Vermont will receive $600 million over 10 years, while Massachusetts will receive $500 million. The money to Nebraska, previously reported to have been $45 million, is really $100 million. Wait — I thought VT (according to Howard Dean in his 2004 presidential campaign) and MA (according to Mitt Romney) were places where statist health care is working out well. Why do they need money? VT’s $600 mil is about $600 $1,000 for every resident of the state ($100/year). Perhaps Dean also got bribed to change his tune (Dean “seemed to change his tone a bit on Meet the Press this Sunday”). As to Romney, would somebody PLEASE tell Objectively Unfit Mitt that his presidential aspirations are finished?

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In the kerfuffle over the issue of faux conservative, gay marriage- and Sarah Palin-obsessed Andrew Sullivan using ghostwriters and researchers while passing off all of the work as his own — a fact that has been acknowledged and can’t be taken back (the cat came out of the bag when one of his ghostwriters said on Sully’s blog that “24 of the 50 posts currently on the front page were written by me”) — two questions that should be asked and apparently aren’t are:

• What did The Atlantic know and when did they know it?
• What did Time (Sully’s previous home before he went to The Altantic) know and when did they know it?

Are these outfits really okay with a false pretense that may go back several years?

Lo and behold, the posts at Sully’s place have authors now. And counting back from this post on Saturday evening, 49 of the 50 are from “under-bloggers,” and Sully’s sole contribution is a post with a picture and no words.

Okay, so maybe Sully wanted the weekend off. But counting back from this post on Wednesday morning, at least 47 of 50 aren’t his (one has no author ID’d). Sully’s current contribution to the Daily Dish is about the equivalent of a salad plate at a formal table setting for six.

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Speaking of Sully, his snide, lying reference to this Pajamas Media column (with reax to the reax here at BizzyBlog, also mirrored here) primarily sneered at without substance at the original critic’s link (as is apparently a time-honored custom), needs an economic reality-based update.

Since that April post, we have learned that federal tax receipts in the quarter that ended in June, the most important quarter for federal collections and the quarter that marked the end of the recession As Normal People Define It, continued to plummet at a rate (over 25%; see Item B at link) that far exceeded:

• the percentage by which the economy contracted (3.8%) during the previous four quarters.
• the percentage by which employment decreased (4.0%, per the more comprehensive Household Survey, comparing June 2009 to June 2008) during the previous four quarters.
• the combined percentage of almost 8% by which the economy AND employment decreased (you can perhaps add another point for the reductions in hours worked by those who are lucky enough to be still working).

Not only that, even though the economy grew in the third quarter (largely artificially induced, but it still grew), preliminary readings from the fourth quarter indicate possibly higher growth, and job declines aren’t as steep, federal receipts continue to come in at double-digit levels below last year (third quarter, -14.7%; October and November, -13.2%), even though at this time last year the recession As Normal People Define It was well underway.

How can this be, if purely recession-related factors are the only items influencing receipts?

Answer — The “Going Galt” phenomenon is very, very real, and yours truly correctly pegged when it began, i.e., at the same time as the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy began.

I will now return to ignoring Sully and his five or more underlings. At one time he was probably what he apparently called himself until just days ago — “the most popular one-man blog on the internet.” His post-9/11 work was often very good. Sadly, he degenerated into reflexive paranoia at about the time of the Goodridge decision six years ago, and has never recovered.

From Eutawville, South Carolina:

Monday, December 21, 2009

It’s been quite a year for a Eutawville man who almost didn’t live to see this Christmas.

While taking a lunch break at his home back on Feb. 18, Karl Parker became ill. He urged his wife to call 911; then he collapsed.

That’s all Parker remembers about his heart attack 10 months ago.

His wife of five years, To Ngan – affectionately nicknamed “Angel” by Parker – recalls that her husband lie motionless in their living room. Nearly nine months pregnant with their son, Kaleb, she frantically called 911.

Angel alerted neighbors Gene and Judy Scott that Karl had collapsed and was unresponsive. Within moments, Parker’s sister, Lynn Behr, and “the whole neighborhood” were at the scene, he said.

In such rural community, it seemed unlikely emergency responders would make it to the scene within the narrow window of time necessary to save a person in cardiac arrest.

Parker said it was nothing short of a miracle when his neighbor, Gary Wolpert, who volunteers as a firefighter and first responder with the Eutawville Fire Department, happened to drive by and notice the excitement.
(more…)

In its obituary on the passing of Nobel economics laureate Paul Samuelson, who died on December 13, Michael Weinstein at the New York Times lavished well-deserved praise on the winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Economics for building “one of the world’s great centers of graduate education in economics” at MIT, but erred seriously in recounting his most visible public policy role.

It’s useful to compare Times headline writers’ treatment of Samuelson to that the paper accorded Milton Friedman and John Kenneth Galbraith upon their deaths. Friedman and Galbraith were also pioneering economists in their own right who passed away after living into their 90s during the final half of this decade:

• Samuelson (December 13, 2009) — “Paul A. Samuelson, Economist, Dies at 94.”
• Friedman (November 16, 2006) — “Milton Friedman, Free Markets Theorist, Dies at 94.”
• Galbraith (April 30, 2006) — “John Kenneth Galbraith, 97, Dies; Economist Held a Mirror to Society.”

Of the three, only the free market capitalism-championing Friedman, who like Samuelson but unlike Galbraith was a Nobel-winning economist, was deemed undeserving of being identified as a member of his chosen profession in his Times obit’s headline.

More seriously, Weinstein rewrites history to give Samuelson credit for the prosperity of the 1960s where very little credit is due.

Here is how the Times reporter describes what led to the Kennedy-Johnson tax cuts of the 1960s (bold is mine):

After the 1960 election, he told the young president-elect that the nation was heading into a recession and that Kennedy should push through a tax cut to head it off. Kennedy was shocked.

“I’ve just campaigned on a platform of fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets and here you are telling me that the first thing I should do in office is to cut taxes?” Mr. Samuelson recalled, quoting the president.

Kennedy eventually accepted the professor’s advice and signaled his willingness to cut taxes, but he was assassinated before he could take action. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, carried out the plan, however, and the economy bounced back.

Not so fast, Mr. Weinstein.

Brian Domitrivic at Investors Business Daily fully retells the history (bolds are mine), including the real advice by a former Samuelson student that won the day (bolds are mine):

But the connection (to the economic prosperity of the 1960s) is unwarranted. JFK listened to Samuelson, but aside from enacting popular business tax credits, he did not take his advice. JFK did precisely the opposite of what Samuelson had counseled in the transition, and this decision is what sparked the boom.

…. Samuelson said the government should raise taxes and loosen money. The idea was that Federal Reserve easing would make businesses invest and employ workers, and tax hikes would siphon off any inflationary pressures caused by the loose money. Samuelson called his policy mix the “neo-classical synthesis.”

JFK was puzzled by the advice. After all, the marginal rate of the income tax, at the astronomical level of 91%, had clearly been at the root of the Eisenhower sluggishness. ….

The U.S. already had the neo-classical synthesis, and it wasn’t working. ….

The economy continued to teeter in 1961 and early 1962 as JFK considered this advice but enacted no policy. ….

JFK ordered his advisers to start taking suggestions from the business community, and a bombshell came from the Chamber of Commerce: a permanent 26% reduction in the marginal rate. Kennedy promptly indicated that this should become law, and it essentially did in the Revenue Act of 1964, which took the top rate down to 70% for good ….

The boom started just as JFK indicated that he was dumping the neo-classical synthesis for its opposite. Indeed, one of Samuelson’s former MIT students, Robert Mundell, was at the time a young staffer at the International Monetary Fund and urging just that.

As Mundell wrote years later, in the wake of his own Nobel Prize, “at first (my advice) wasn’t popular. This was because it recommended a complete reversal of the … neo-classical synthesis.”

…. Fortunately for the United States (and me), President Kennedy reversed the policy mix to that of tax cuts to spur growth in combination with tight money to protect (the dollar). The result was the longest expansion ever … unmatched until the Reagan expansion of the 1980s.”

Mundell would reiterate his ideas in the 1970s, under the name “supply-side economics,” and see them implemented again the following decade.

The world lost its greatest Keynesian in Paul Samuelson last Sunday. But the historic runs of growth that the United States posted during his career did not derive from his economics.

Domitrovic’s account refutes Weinstein’s erroneous and deceptive narrative, which conveniently ignores what Samuelson actually recommended at crunch time.

Domitrovic also clearly and correctly identifies Kennedy, and then Johnson, as converted supply-siders. All the whining on the left about how “unfair” it is for those who advocate supply-side tax cuts to invoke their legacies won’t change what they did, and its positive, economy-growing result — nor will a deliberately misleading Times obituary.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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- Dec. 16 — Quote of the Day, on the Death of Paul Samuelson