Read-the-whole-thing. A real corker from Doc Zero.

[Update-PA] Der Speigel just tore Obama a new one too over that speech. Last line in their piece: "The American president doesn't need any opponents at the moment. He's already got himself."

Posted by: Ace at 02:19 PM | Comments (43)
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No, seriously. LOL.

The objection by the prosecutor.

Huck's response -- or rather the response from his Deputy Legal Counsel, indicating Huck "laughed out loud" at the prosecutor's letter.

This is not specifically about Clemmons, but about Huckabee's rather blase attitude about clemencies generally.

Thanks to Slublog.

Magic Words! Huck asserted that religion played no part in Clemmons' clemency. (Ahem -- Clemmons-y.)

Well, maybe, maybe not, but Clemmons' paperwork for clemency mentions the magic words at bullet point seven.

Now, yes, this sort of thing is very standard, and it does not prove Huckabee a liar. It doesn't.

It does prompt further questions, however.

Seriously... It is standard. I imagine 99.9% of all such requests mention God and an heart now open to goodness and all that. Or more than 99.9%. Pretty much only an evangelical Satanist would fail to mention his new, special relationship with God.

So I don't mean to suggest that this even comes close to casting doubt on Huck.

Still, he has had this rap -- an easy turn for the right minister and the right sob story -- so it does provoke questions.

Posted by: Ace at 12:47 PM | Comments (121)
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I don't really know if that's the best headline. I just want to get this article up.

Interviewed by police... to find the real killers.

he scientist at the heart of the climate change email scandal was today interviewed by police about the scandal.

Two plain clothes officers arrived in an unmarked car in the afternoon and took Professor Phil Jones to Norfolk Police's headquarters in nearby Wymondham to give a statement.

Sources said the interview concerned the theft of emails from the university and alleged death threats since the contents of the emails were released, adding he was being treated as a 'victim of crime' rather than a suspect in any criminal investigation.

Detective Superintendent Julian Gregory added: 'He is one of the people assisting police with their enquiries.'

I'll bet he's assisting. I also bet he'd stop assisting if anyone official asked him about his emails asking others to delete emails legally-discoverable through FOIA. (I think the British analogue is called "FOI" for short, but I'll keep saying "FOIA" because everyone gets what I'm talking about.)

And no one will ask him about that. Because the "real crime" here is apparently blowing the whistle on a criminal conspiracy.

As Treacher said, ClimateGate is about the illegality of leaking emails in much the same way that Watergate was about parking garages.

More:

Eduardo Zorita, an expert in European climate trends, said that future reports from the UN's International Panel of Climate Change would lack credibility if Professor Jones was involved in their compilation.

As director of the University of East Anglia's prestigious Climatic Research Unit, the professor has provided temperature data key to previous reports used by governments around the world when setting climate change policy.

Dr Zorita also said that the content of thousands of emails and documents stolen from the University of East Anglia's computer system and published on the internet confirmed that some global warming research was riddled with 'machination, conspiracies and collusion'.

...

He said that he was aware that his call for Professor Jones and others who wrote controversial emails to be banned from contributing to future reports could harm his career, but 'the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible any more'.

He said: 'I can confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU files.

'The scientific debate has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas.'

The researcher added although he does not believe that manmade climate is a hoax, he and other researchers have been ‘bullied and subtly blackmailed’ to fit in the scientific mainstream.

'In this atmosphere, PhD students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the "politically correct picture",' he said.

There's an old thing we all know: A cop -- even a good cop -- will be tempted to frame a man he knows for a fact to be guilty... if there's not enough evidence otherwise to convict that plainly guilty man.

What stops cops from doing so? Well, most of the time: The fact that their evidence will be examined in an adversarial proceeding where a defense attorney might catch wind of the framing. Which could lead to the cop being suspended, fired, or... even winding up in prison.

And sometimes, despite all that, a cop will still resort to planting evidence to frame a guilty man.

In this case, we have 1, a large number of liked-minded zealots all convinced beyond convincing that their is a villain afoot, 2, a lack of really strong direct evidence to convict this horrible scoundrel, and, crucially, 3, no adversarial process at all, no examination by the "defense attorneys," if you will, and so therefore no check on the impulse to frame the guilty.

No sunlight, no chance of being detected. No consequences.

Is it any wonder this happened?

We are looking at "science" conducted with less rigor and skepticism than we see in the a corrupt station house in New Orleans.

Thanks to JackStraw.

Posted by: Ace at 12:43 PM | Comments (137)
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Weird. Iowahawk comes in to the comments and posts a detailed, authoritative explanation of the scandal. If only he had his own blog for this sort of thing. Ah, well: I'll take his free labor on my behalf gladly.

First of all, in case you haven't read it yet, Iowahawk's Secret Life of Climate Researchers is howlingly funny:

Many of those behaviors are on display in the security film, as we see a sexless group of drone graduate students processing a raw datum with saliva, sawdust and Fortran code. After each iteration the time series is presented to the Alpha Grantwriter to see if fits inside his graph. Several graduate drones die of exhaustion, but the data eventually fit the template.

Next the Alpha Grantwriter flies to an international climate research conference with the completed PowerPoint template, where he will share his guano with other Alpha Grantwriters over cocktails in the hotel lounge. This is a process metascientists refer to as "peer review."

Now, on to his serious stuff. I strongly recommend reading this as a nutshell explanation of the scandal and the supposed science behind it.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:10 AM | Comments (249)
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There was some hope on the part of advocates for same sex marriage that NY would pass it today but the state Senate just rejected it by a vote of 24 yes, 38 no. The Assembly approved the bill last night and Gov. Paterson would have signed it.

This is NY ladies and gentlemen. All Democrats, all the time.

Can we get past the idea that only Christian Conservatives oppose the redefinition of this fundamental institution?

Frankly I'm stunned at the margin of defeat. I thought it would pass by a vote or two (I even had the post written and ready to go...Flaming Skull and all) but to be trounced like this is a crushing blow.

If you can't pass this by popular will in NY or CA, where exactly is this popular? DC I guess but that's not a state.

No word yet from leading opponent of same sex marriage...President Barack Obama.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:01 AM | Comments (44)
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From the headlines, thanks to Krakatoa.

Just so you know, Stewart is not ready yet, of course, to give up his Pro-Science Talisman of Liberal Do-Goodery.

So it's a strange, disjointed thing -- he offers the damning evidence, rants a bit, and then comes back to his personal comfort zone of insisting that the people saying that maybe we need to see this data and check it twice are the crazy "anti-science" ones.

As I said -- interesting to watch the psychological journey here.

How do you deal with loss? Denial, then anger, then bargaining, then depression.

And finally -- doubt we'll see too many get the last step -- acceptance.

Here's a good article from Reason.

Consider researcher Tom Wigley’s email describing his adjustments to mid-20th century global temperature data in order to lower an inconvenient warming "blip." According to the global warming hypothesis, late 20th century man-made warming was supposed to be faster than earlier natural warming. But the data show rapid "natural" warming in the 1930s. Adjusting the 1940 temperature blip downward makes a better-looking trend line in support of the notion of rapidly accelerating man-made warming. Collecting and evaluating temperature data requires the exercise of scientific judgment, but Wigley's emails suggest a convenient correction of 0.15 degree Celsius that fits the man-made global warming hypothesis. The adjustment may be reasonable—changes in instrumentation might need to be accounted for—but all raw data and the methodologies used to adjust them should be publicly available so others can check them to make sure.

Bonus: I'm sure I've linked this clip -- or clips like this -- three or four times before.

But worth watching again. The late great utterly-unexpected-out-of-left-field ally Michael Crichton explains what religion is, what science is, and why the cult of The Virgin Gaia is the former and why it shouldn't be.

That, by the way, is from a post by Adam "Jayne Cobb" Baldwin on Big Hollywood.

If they're going to quote swell actors for their cause, then damnit, so am I.

Cheek aside, it's a good piece. Who knew sociopathic meathead "Jayne" had it in him.

Thanks to "Dr. Spank" for that. And you can trust him: Because he's a doctor.

Posted by: Ace at 10:33 AM | Comments (120)
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I guess that's what this means.

I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. I have not been true to my values and the behavior my family deserves. I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect. I am dealing with my behavior and personal failings behind closed doors with my family. Those feelings should be shared by us alone.

Although I am a well-known person and have made my career as a professional athlete, I have been dismayed to realize the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means. For the last week, my family and I have been hounded to expose intimate details of our personal lives. The stories in particular that physical violence played any role in the car accident were utterly false and malicious. Elin has always done more to support our family and shown more grace than anyone could possibly expect.

But no matter how intense curiosity about public figures can be, there is an important and deep principle at stake which is the right to some simple, human measure of privacy. I realize there are some who donÂ’t share my view on that. But for me, the virtue of privacy is one that must be protected in matters that are intimate and within oneÂ’s own family. Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldnÂ’t have to mean public confessions.

My opinion on this is that I didn't care when it happened, didn't care when it was speculated about, and continue resolutely in my 18-month exit strategy on not caring.

Your mileage may vary. Just sort of a big fat meh from me.

Posted by: Ace at 10:17 AM | Comments (193)
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Numerous instances, arrests, scams, fake addresses, phony companies, etc.

...Police and authorities in several European countries are investigating scams worth billions of kroner, which all originate in the Danish quota register. The CO2 quotas are traded in other EU countries.
DenmarkÂ’s quota register, which the Energy Agency within the Climate and Energy Ministry administers, is the largest in the world in terms of personal quota registrations. It is much easier to register here than in other countries, where it can take up to three months to be approved.

Ekstra Bladet reporters have found examples of people using false addresses and companies that are in liquidation, which havenÂ’t been removed from the register.
One of the cases, which stems from the Danish register, involves fraud of more than 8 billion kroner. This case, in which nine people have been arrested, is being investigated in England...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 10:14 AM | Comments (45)
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Statement contrary to interest:

"Just for a second -- health care reform, whether you use a ten-year number or when you start in 2010 or start in 2014, wherever you start at, so it is still either $1 trillion or it's $2.5 trillion, depending on where you startÂ…"

One trillion, two point five trillion; potato, pahtahtoh. It's so arbitrary how we cost this thing, eh? Such a minor point for Republicans to get hung up about.

Baucus is acknowledging the Democrats' health care bill doesn't actually start spending out any sort of real money (as real money is now defined) until four years in. And yet they use those four years as the first four years of their ten-year projection, ignoring the fact that for four years the costs are close to zero (well... according to how we now define "close to zero"). So their "ten year projection" is in fact only a six year projection, which is even more deceptive than that, because taxes are raised in all ten years.

Thus giving a very fake, very manipulated trendline. Ten years of inflow, six years of outflow. Why not compare apples-to-apples and graph the ten year window when this bastard is actually hemorrhaging out taxpayers' blood? Because, of course, that would show the true costs of this mammoth program.

In other words, they Democrats have discovered a "trick" to "hide the incline." Lot of that going around these days, eh?

Eh, can't argue. The politics are settled.

Posted by: Ace at 09:33 AM | Comments (70)
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They had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get it:

Thirteen white city firefighters and one Hispanic firefighter were promoted to lieutenants and captains. They were among the firefighters who sued after the city threw out of the test results because too few minorities would have been promoted.

The formal ceremony takes place on December 10.

My previous coverage of the "landmark" discrimination decision Ricci v. DeStefano is here.

Thanks to Roadking for the pointer.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:09 AM | Comments (45)
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