The BBC has told its journalists not to call Abu Qatada, the al-Qaeda preacher, an “extremist”. In order to avoid making a “value judgment”, the corporation’s managers have ruled that he can only be described as “radical”…A British court has called Qatada a “truly dangerous individual” and even his defence team has suggested he poses a “grave risk” to national security…Daily Telegraph, journalists were told: “Do not call him an extremist –- we must call him a radical. Extremist implies a value judgment.”

For what it’s worth, nineteen audio cassettes of Abu Qatada’s sermons were found in the apartment of one Mohamed Atta some years back.

they noticed what appeared to be a uniformed Transportation Security Administration officer holding a leashed police dog. “He just loosened the leash on the dog, and the dog came over to check me out,” Vetter said. Standing on the platform above Vetter were three other officers who appeared to be wearing bullet-proof vests…The Vetters had encountered VIPR — special TSA Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response teams…

The program has 15 teams and is expanding to get access to 12 new teams…officers include plainclothes and uniformed team members — some of them armed — who arrive without telling passengers in advance. Officers in the joint operations then randomly ask travelers for permission to search their bags for explosives.

To prevent accusations of profiling, searchers choose a random number — eight for example — and then search the bags of every eighth passenger…local and federal authorities insist the searches are not mandatory. But passengers who refuse are not allowed on the train…

Police Chief Christopher Trucillo, who works regularly with VIPR teams, acknowledged that the search system isn’t perfect. Potential attackers carrying explosives who refuse searches are free to simply drive to the next station on the line and board there…

A high-profile example of VIPR’s growing pains, transit officials say, is a VIPR-assisted passenger screening a year ago at Amtrak’s station in Savannah, Georgia. Instead of screening passengers as they boarded trains — which is standard security procedure — officers were screening passengers as they were getting off trains. Security experts know that makes no sense

Let’s count the ways that this totally unnecessary government intrusion into citizens’ lives is offensive and ridiculous. It’s expensive, ineffective because of its randomness, clueless in that it searches people getting off trains, and inane because all a hypothetical bad guy would have to do is drive to the next station. But be warned: better not tweet anything about Marilyn Monroe — or else!

Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting. The Department of Homeland Security flagged him as a potential threat when he posted an excited tweet to his pals about his forthcoming trip to Hollywood which read: ‘Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America’…Despite telling officials the term ‘destroy’ was British slang for ‘party’, they were held on suspicion of planning to ‘commit crimes’ and had their passports confiscated…

Leigh was also quizzed about another tweet which quoted hit US comedy Family Guy which read: ’3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA pissing people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up! Federal agents even searched his suitcase looking for spades and shovels, claiming Emily was planning to act as Leigh’s ‘look out’ while he raided Marilyn’s tomb.

Bar manager Leigh, from Coventry, and Emily, 24, from Birmingham, were then quizzed for five hours at LAX before they were handcuffed and put into a van with illegal immigrants and locked up overnight. They spent 12 hours in separate holding cells…’They asked why we wanted to destroy America and we tried to explain it meant to get trashed and party. ‘I almost burst out laughing when they asked me if I was going to be Leigh’s lookout while he dug up Marilyn Monroe.

Leigh’s charge sheet, alongside a police mug shot and finger print, added: ‘He had posted on his Tweeter website account that he was coming to the United States to dig up the grave of Marilyn Monroe. ‘Also on his tweeter account Mr Bryan posted that he was coming to destroy America.’

We think twitter is an invitation to get caught up in unpleasant things, but this is ridiculous. It would appear that it’s not just the TSA that has lost all sense of proportion and common sense. (Oh, and by the way, it’s impossible to dig up Marilyn Monroe, since she’s not underground.)

Beck Laxton, 46, and partner Kieran Cooper, 44, have spent half the decade concealing the gender of their son, Sasha. “I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping,” Laxton said in an interview with the Cambridge News. “Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?…Sasha dresses in clothes he likes — be it a hand-me-downs from his sister or his brother. The big no-no’s are hyper-masculine outfits like skull-print shirts and cargo pants.

In one photo, sent to friends and family, Sasha’s dressed in a shiny pink girl’s swimsuit. “Children like sparkly things,” says Beck. “And if someone thought Sasha was a girl because he was wearing a pink swimming costume, then what effect would that have?”…

When Sasha turned five and headed to school, Laxton was forced to make her son’s sex public. That meant Sasha would have to get used to being a boy in the eyes of his peers. Still, his mom is intervening. While the school requires different uniforms for boys and girls, Sasha wears a girl’s blouse with his pants.

Makes us want to play matchmaker. Look, almost anything’s better to comment on than the drip, drip, drip of the primary season, or the appalling situation in Washington.

Fisker Automotive is recalling all 239 of its 2012 Karma luxury plug-in hybrid cars because of a fire hazard, according to a report filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Prices on the 2012 model start at $103,000…the problem was discovered on Dec. 16, when workers at the Valmet Automotive assembly plant in Finland noticed coolant dripping…fewer than 50 vehicles were in the hands of consumers.

Hmmm. Made in Finland. Costs $100K. Nobody buys them. Hybrid that gets only 20mpg. Sets itself on fire. What could the punchline be? Some kind of joke about the USSR? No, sadly, the joke’s on all of us.

A Czech national was nabbed in Argentina for trying to board a transatlantic flight with 247 live animals including poisonous snakes and endangered reptiles packed in a bulging suitcase, reports said Monday. The man identified as Karel Abelovsky, 51, was caught while trying to board a flight for Madrid when shocked baggage X-ray technicians and staff at the Iberia Airlines desk at Ezeiza Airport in greater Buenos Aires noticed “organic substances moving inside,” local media reported.

When they opened the bag, they found more than 200 reptiles and mollusks, among them nine species of poisonous snakes including South American pitvipers, packed in clear plastic containers. There were also 15 venomous vipers, including two yararas — which can measure up to 1.50 meters (five feet) — and several young boas.

A similarly dangerous situation developed in the USA, but fortunately the TSA seized the cupcake.

A woman who just flew back home from Las Vegas says an airport security officer confiscated her frosted cupcake because he thought the icing on it could be a security risk. Rebecca Hains said the Transportation Security Administration agent at McCarran International Airport took her cupcake Wednesday, telling her its frosting was enough like a gel to violate TSA restrictions on allowing liquids and gels onto flights to prevent them from being used as explosives. She said the agent told her the frosting was conforming to the jar it was inside.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/2011/12/23/20111223massachusetts-woman-says-tsa-agent-confiscated-cupcake.html#ixzz1kxVbW0Wa

Last Saturday, violent groups of Islamic-Salafi radicals burned the famous scientific institute established by Napoleon in Egypt after its first encounter with the West. Some historians consider it the start of modern times in the Middle East. The site, L’Institut d’Egypte, held some 200,000 original and rare books, exhibits, maps, archeological findings and studies from Egypt and the entire Middle East, based on the work of generations of western researchers. Most of the artifacts were lost forever, burned or looted…

In 1258, the Mongols burned the immense library in Baghdad known as the “House of Wisdom.” It held rare writings that have disappeared forever, Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and the other cornerstones of Western civilization. All we know today is that these books existed, yet following the terrible fire in Baghdad they were burned forever. The Mongols sought to secure the same objective as Egypt’s Salafis: Erasing the past and keeping only their present.

Earlier this year: “to be in Tahrir Square tonight, to feel the energy and pride of a people taking back the keys to their country and their future from a tired old dictator, was a privilege.” Yeah, right.

In Montana’s Finley Basin there are known tungsten deposits. An Australian company wanted to bring revenue and jobs to the state by developing the resource. While the property was successfully drilled and recognized by Union Carbide in the seventies, it is now about 200 yards inside a roadless study area. The Forest Service was willing to offer a conditional drilling permit. Among the conditions were these requirements:

– The drill sites must be cleared using hand tools,
– The drilling equipment and fuel must be transported to the site by a team of pack mules,
– The mules must be fed certified weed-free hay, and
– Drill site and trail reclamation must be done using hand tools.

The company gave up. How can America remain competitive in a global marketplace when we are required to use pick axes and mules? How does this help America’s heavy equipment manufacturers like Caterpillar?

Everyone involved in this decision-making process should be terminated 1/21/13. They can stand in the unemployment line with the FTC employees who spend their time investigating Chuck E. Cheese.

The Justice Department on Friday rejected South Carolina’s law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, saying it makes it harder for minorities to cast ballots. It was the first voter ID law to be refused by the federal agency in nearly 20 years…”Minority registered voters were nearly 20 percent more likely to lack DMV-issued ID than white registered voters, and thus to be effectively disenfranchised,” Perez wrote, noting that the numbers could be even higher since the data submitted by the state doesn’t include inactive voters.

CNN:

A federal judge in Charleston, South Carolina blocked Thursday parts of the state’s anti-illegal immigration law approved by the legislature last summer…The first section blocked makes it a felony to transport or conceal a person “with intent to further that person’s unlawful entry into the United States” or to help that person avoid apprehension.

Campaign 2012. Attacking the rule of law on transparently flimsy grounds, and with such brass too. Pretty much what we predicted a year ago. In a way it’s not surprising, but in a way it’s shocking to see how far this country has fallen and so fast. (Imagine the kind of hope and change in store for the country 2013-2017 if these low lifes get away with this next November.)

Final points: (a) the opposition party is MIA on these outrages; and (b) the media, the media — the lead stories of the day are about a $20 a week tax cut for 8 weeks, and morons fighting over who gets to buy a pair of sneakers. A million Americans died in the nation’s wars for this?

Just about the only thing more ridiculous than this track record is the media’s track record of ignoring and covering up these appalling performances.

as the Founders knew, it is unwise to give people more powers than you would like them to use. There ought to be a law, I think, that in order to regulate something you have to have some understanding of it. And when people are saying things like, “This is just the rogue foreign Web sites” and “This only targets the bad actors” and “So you want universities to host illegal pirated versions of copyrighted content?,” it’s enough to make you claw out large fistfuls of your hair. No! No! Nobody is hosting anything.

This bill would require service providers to cut off access to entire Web sites where users are deemed to be engaging in copyright infringement, not take down stolen content they posted themselves. That’s already against the law. But no one seemed to be able to express this. When you have a signed letter from the engineers responsible for creating the Internet pointing out that this bill would jeopardize our cybersecurity, balkanize the Internet and create a climate of uncertainty that would stifle innovation, it seems odd to ignore it.

As a general rule, when the people saying that this will have a horrible, chilling impact on something are the ones who created that thing in the first place, and the people who are saying, “Oh, no, it’ll be fine, it only targets the bad actors” are members of the Motion Picture Association of America, it seems obvious whose opinion you should heed.

The bill has now been amended to exclude .com, .net, and .org and only target those darned foreigners, which of course illustrates just how idiotic the bill is. Pirate Bay, anyone? Our question is this: why, after the horrible overreach of government during the past three years, is there a potential majority in Congress to give even more power to the government? Have these people learned nothing at all?

Millionaire job creators are like unicorns. They are impossible to find and don’t exist.

Such wisdom, and from the same fellow who said that “there’s not a single shred of evidence” that over-regulating kills jobs. No wonder relations with the business community are what they are.

On second thought, at least he didn’t say this: “I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history.”

NTSB recommends full ban on use of cell phones while driving…Tuesday’s recommendation, if adopted by states, would outlaw non-emergency phone calls and texting by operators of every vehicle on the road. It would apply to hands-free as well as hand-held devices…Chairwoman Hersman said the ban may inconvenience motorists, but would save lives…The NTSB said cell phone laws alone would not solve the problem, but must be accompanied by aggressive educational campaigns

Ah, our federal government. Usurping the role of the states, mandating a totally inappropriate and petty one-size-fits-all non-solution that encourages lawbreaking, and building an unnecessary education bureaucracy. An apt metaphor for the idiocy of the last three years. No wonder pretty much everybody has had it up to here with Washington.

Coca-Cola…withdrew the red cans and replaced them with snow-white cans as antiseptic as a bedpan. The white cans are decorated with shadowy images of polar bears, commemorating Coke’s contribution of $3 million to the World Wildlife Fund’s campaign to “save the polar bears.”

Maybe next year Coke will have cans illustrated with a hockey stick and no Medieval Warm Period. That’ll wow ‘em. (In our view, doctoring the data to remove the MWP was necessary in the minds of the global warming fraudsters so that they could claim that recent warming was “unprecedented” and would require spending vast unnecessary sums, which BTW would benefit them economically and professionally.)

EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration…EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact. Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict…

professors Dr Andreas Hahn and Dr Moritz Hagenmeyer…compiled what they assumed was an uncontroversial statement in order to test new laws which allow products to claim they can reduce the risk of disease, subject to EU approval. They applied for the right to state that “regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration” as well as preventing a decrease in performance.

However, last February, the European Food Standards Authority (EFSA) refused to approve the statement. A meeting of 21 scientists in Parma, Italy, concluded that reduced water content in the body was a symptom of dehydration and not something that drinking water could subsequently control.

Just how many millions of euros were spent on conferences in Parma and other things for a “three-year investigation” of whether water is wet? Niall Ferguson may well be right.

Plan EJ 2014, which is meant to mark the 20th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 12898 on environmental justice, is EPA’s overarching strategy for advancing environmental justice. It seeks to:
1. Protect the environment and health in overburdened communities.
2. Empower communities to take action to improve their health and environment.
3. Establish partnerships with local, state, tribal, and federal governments and organizations to achieve healthy and sustainable communities

In July 2010, EPA introduced Plan EJ 2014 as a concept for public comment and initiated the development of implementation plans. This product is the culmination of nearly a year’s effort by EPA programs and regions, as well as engagement with stakeholders, to develop nine implementation plans with the goals, strategies, deliverables, and milestones outlined herein.

Plan EJ 2014 has three major sections: Cross-Agency Focus Areas, Tools Development Areas, and Program Initiatives. The following summaries outline the implementation plans for Plan EJ 2014’s five cross-Agency Focus Areas and four Tools Development Areas

This is the sort of nonsense we’re spending taxpayer money on in these troubled times? Tellingly, the 181 page brochure on “environmental justice,” whatever that is, has quite a few pages with the legend “this page left intentionally blank” — so you can waste paper when printing the document. Everyone connected with this should be fired immediately. HT: PL

the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work. Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor. When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company’s financial demands, senior officials replaced the government’s lead negotiator for the deal, interviews and documents show. When Siga was in danger of losing its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from competing…

the government could draw on $1 billion worth of smallpox vaccine it already owns to inoculate the entire U.S. population and quickly treat people exposed to the virus. The vaccine, which costs the government $3 per dose, can reliably prevent death when given within four days of exposure. Siga’s drug, an antiviral pill called ST-246, would be used to treat people who were diagnosed with smallpox too late for the vaccine to help. Yet the new drug cannot be tested for effectiveness in people because of ethical constraints — and no one knows whether animal testing could prove it would work in humans.

Smallpox is lethal and nasty. When Edward Jenner created the smallpox vaccine by using cowpox, he arguably contributed to saving more lives than any single man in history, yet we have found no record of him receiving a $433 million contract.

You will recall that some years ago, people worried about a smallpox terrorist attack. The US government created a plan to deal with it, and an idiotic plan it was. A group a bad guys flying on Southwest for a week before they keeled over would render the government’s plan useless. They’d also render ST-246 useless. So this is another big waste of money. Far better and cheaper to encourage voluntary vaccinations, but apparently this is not being done. We are given to understand, however, that the government officials in charge of smallpox response have all been vaccinated. How nice for them.

Several decades ago, back when Ugly George roamed Manhattan, there was a homeless fellow whom we’d often see in the vicinity of Broadway and 57th Street. He had a shopping cart with a drum in it. He’d play the drum occasionally and ask for handouts. For some reason, he wore what appeared to be shoe polish on his head outlining the part of the scalp normally covered by hair. We hadn’t thought of him in a long time, but he seems to now have successors galore.

The Atlantic:

Of all these parts of Obama’s executive order, the loan forgiveness aspect will have the least impact. By moving the timeline from 25 to 20 years, it could be significant in the long run — but it won’t be felt for decades. Remember, 82% of the current student loan debt outstanding was accrued in just the past decade. So it will be at least another 10 years before any of those borrowers have hit the 20-year mark…The monthly impact of the president’s new effort for most Americans paying off college debt will be between $4 and $8

More sleight-of-hand for the innumerate and the gullible. BTW, if this is not a photoshop, this girl needs more than just financial help. (Glenn Reynolds has a simple plan to deal with the debt problem.)

A quote from February 2009:

we will pursue the housing plan I’m outlining today. And through this plan, we will help between 7 and 9 million families restructure or refinance their mortgages so they can afford — avoid foreclosure. And we’re not just helping homeowners at risk of falling over the edge; we’re preventing their neighbors from being pulled over that edge, too — as defaults and foreclosures contribute to sinking home values, and failing local businesses, and lost jobs

In the real world, we all know that government-centric tinkering doesn’t work. Even Austan Goolsbee has finally figured that out: “If you look at Cash for Clunkers or the first home buyer tax credit…I don’t think you would do that.” The only thing that works is creating an environment where businesses can thrive, and the administration would have to abandon its ideology to do so. A year ago we were saying the same thing, and it’s only gotten worse since then.

So what do we have the administration doing now? More tinkering, yet again on mortgages, and on student loans too. Result: “Just 21% favor the forgiveness of student loans…18% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing…That’s the lowest level of Strong Approval ever.” Hey, it’s no small achievement to both govern ineffectively and against the will of the people at the same time.

“If you don’t want to be part of this group, then you can just leave,” yelled a facilitator in a button-down shirt, “Every week we clean our house.” Seth Harper, the pro-drummer proletarian, chimed in on the side of the sitters. “We disagree on how we should clean it. A lot of us disagree with the pile.”

Zetah, tall and imposing with a fiery red beard, closed debate with a sigh. “We’re all big boys and girls. Let’s do this.” As he told me afterwards, “A lot of people are like spoiled children.” The cure? A cold snap. “Personally, I cannot wait for winter. It will clear out these people who aren’t here for the right reasons. Bring on the snow. The real revolutionaries will stay in -50 degrees.”

“The sunshine protestors will leave,” said “Zonkers,” a 20-year-old cleaner and longtime occupier from Tennessee. (He asked that his name not be used due to a felony marijuana conviction.) “The people who remain are the people who care. You get a lot of crust punks, silly kids, people who want to panhandle … It disgusts me. These people are here for a block party.”

Another argument broke out next to the pile of appropriated belongings, growing taller by the minute. A man named Sage Roberts desperately rifled through the pile, looking for a sleeping bag. “They’ve taken my stuff,” he muttered. Lauren Digion, the sanitation group leader, broke in: “This isn’t your stuff. You got all this stuff from comfort [the working group]. It belongs to comfort.”

And as I spoke to Michael Glaser, a 26-year-old Chicagoan helping lead winter preparation efforts, a physical fight broke out between a cleaner and a camper just feet from us. “When cleanups happen, people get mad,” Glaser said. “This is its own city. Within every city there are people who freeload, who make people’s lives miserable. We just deal with it. We can’t kick them out.”

As some guy said: “The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side.” Pathetic.

They’re as knowledgeable as they are Tea-Party-like. Military spending is 17% of the budget, not largest part of the budget, as is thought by 94% of the OWS crowd. Yeah, just like the Tea Party. And of course, “we understand their struggles and we are on their side.” Pathetic. (BTW, that incident the other day — we think the teleprompter was trying to stage a getaway.)

Listen to just about any speech by a Republican presidential hopeful, and you’ll hear assertions that the Obama administration is responsible for weak job growth. How so? The answer, repeated again and again, is that businesses are afraid to expand and create jobs because they fear costly regulations and higher taxes. Nor are politicians the only people saying this. Conservative economists repeat the claim in op-ed articles, and Federal Reserve officials repeat it to justify their opposition to even modest efforts to aid the economy. The first thing you need to know, then, is that there’s no evidence supporting this claim and a lot of evidence showing that it’s false.

Great! We must have been dreaming about that oil drilling moratorium. Good to know the NYT is on board with a drill baby drill energy policy.

Vong, 47, left Vietnam in 1982, and after stops in Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong, settled in San Francisco and lived there for 20 years before coming here to open a nail salon with a difference. Her salon offered $30 fish therapy, wherein small fish from China nibble dead skin from people’s feet. Arizona’s Board of Cosmetology decided the fish were performing pedicures, and because all pedicure instruments must be sterilized and fish cannot be, the therapy must be discontinued. Vong lost her more-than-$50,000 investment in fish tanks and other equipment, and some customers. Three of her employees lost their jobs.

It’s not just people who are unemployed but the fish too. Maybe Arizona should team up with the National Science Foundation, which spent half a million dollars on exercise machines for shrimp.

China has sent the price of compact fluorescent light bulbs soaring in the United States. By closing or nationalizing dozens of the producers of rare earth metals — which are used in energy-efficient bulbs and many other green-energy products — China is temporarily shutting down most of the industry and crimping the global supply of the vital resources.

China produces nearly 95 percent of the world’s rare earth materials, and it is taking the steps to improve pollution controls in a notoriously toxic mining and processing industry. But the moves also have potential international trade implications and have started yet another round of price increases for rare earths, which are vital for green-energy products including giant wind turbines, hybrid gasoline-electric cars and compact fluorescent bulbs.

General Electric, facing complaints in the United States about rising prices for its compact fluorescent bulbs, recently noted in a statement that if the rate of inflation over the last 12 months on the rare earth element europium oxide had been applied to a $2 cup of coffee, that coffee would now cost $24.55. An 11-watt G.E. compact fluorescent bulb — the lighting equivalent of a 40-watt incandescent bulb — was priced on Thursday at $15.88

Actually, that’s the price for a pack of three. You can get a regular old light bulb for a dollar or less. But that’s a bad idea. Those old bulbs are terrible — they’re cheaper and they contain less poison than the new ones!

Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were among 17 banks sued by the U.S. to recoup $196 billion spent on mortgage-backed securities bought by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, filed 17 lawsuits yesterday…

The cases are Federal Housing Finance Agency v. Bank of America Corp. (BAC), 11-CV-6195; FHFA v. Barclays Bank Plc., 11-CV- 6190; FHFA v. Citigroup, 11-CV-6196; FHFA v. Credit Suisse Holdings (USA) Inc., 11-CV-6200; FHFA v. Deutsche Bank AG, 11- CV-6192; FHFA v. First Horizon National Corp., 11-CV-6193; FHFA v. Goldman, Sachs & Co., 11-CV-6198; FHFA v. HSBC North America Holdings Inc., 11-CV-6189; FHFA v. JPMorgan Chase & Co., 11-CV- 6188; FHFA v. Merrill Lynch & Co., 11-CV-6202; FHFA v. Nomura Holding America Inc., 11-CV-6201; FHFA v. SG Americas Inc., 11- CV-6203, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). Also: FHFA v. Ally Financial Inc.; FHFA v. Countrywide Financial Corp.; FHFA v. General Electric Co.; FHFA v. Morgan Stanley, New York State Supreme Court, New York County (Manhattan). And: FHFA v. Royal Bank of Scotland, 11-CV-1383, U.S. District Court, District of Connecticut (New Haven).

Comments and questions: (1) in the sub-prime debacle, everyone involved either looked the other way or had his hand in the cookie jar, so either throw them all in jail or move on; (2) as Roger Kimball noted, the government would do well to look in the mirror; (3) admittedly this is a great jobs program for lawyers, but exactly how is this going to help the housing industry and mortgage lending?

Bonus question: if the government wins the lawsuit, which part of the government will collect the $196 billion and which part of the government will bail out the banks to the tune of $196 billion?

The United States has a jobs problem and there’s not a lot President Barack Obama or Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke can do about it…Obama does plan a Midwestern bus tour from August 15 to August 17 to talk up jobs.

At the risk of repeating ourselves endlessly, the solutions to this problem are obvious to anyone who has recovered from his youth and the misinformation learned as an undergraduate.

The Omaha Public Schools used more than $130,000 in federal stimulus dollars to buy each teacher, administrator and staff member a manual on how to become more culturally sensitive…The authors assert that American government and institutions create advantages that “channel wealth and power to white people,” that color-blindness will not end racism and that educators should “take action for social justice.” The book says that teachers should acknowledge historical systemic oppression in schools, including racism, sexism, homophobia and “ableism,” defined by the authors as discrimination or prejudice against people with disabilities…

The book that OPS bought, “The Cultural Proficiency Journey: Moving Beyond Ethical Barriers Toward Profound School Change,” includes a worksheet for teachers to score themselves on a continuum of cultural sensitivity. The continuum ranges from “cultural destructiveness,” as evidenced by genocide and ethnocide, to “cultural proficiency,” depicted as the highest level of awareness. Only those educators who acknowledge the existence of white privilege in America, that “white” is a culture in America and that race “is a definer for social and economic status” can reach proficiency, the authors contend. Those who score poorly on the worksheet are asked in the book what they will do “to align yourself with the values expressed.”

No wonder the teachers and administrators have to cheat on their students’ tests. With all this rubbish, there’s no time for the three R’s. HT: BOTW

As part of its effort to combat the economic recession, the federal government pumped nearly $80 billion in direct investment and tax credits into the clean energy sector, catalyzing an unprecedented industry expansion. Solar energy, for example, grew 67 percent in the United States in 2010. The U.S. wind energy industry also experienced unprecedented growth as a result of the generous Section 1603 clean energy stimulus program. The industry grew by 40 percent and added 10 GW of new turbines in 2009…The global clean energy industry is set for a major crash. The reason is simple. Clean energy is still much more expensive and less reliable than coal or gas, and in an era of heightened budget austerity, the subsidies required to make clean energy artificially cheaper are becoming unsustainable…we need a comprehensive energy innovation strategy to develop, manufacture and deploy riskier but more promising clean energy technologies that may eventually compete with fossil energy

Oh, we get it. We need smarter subsidies for things that don’t work and are uneconomic. Apparently it’s true that common sense is uncommon.

Australia’s population of wild camels, the Financial Times reveals, may soon be shot in order to earn carbon credits under the country’s forthcoming emissions trading scheme. Each one of the creatures is estimated to produce a tonne of carbon dioxide a year –- about the same as a 7,000km flight

Question: if the camel was also the pilot of the plane, what would the emissions be? And what about the methane? What a ridiculous world we have.

LAUSD is forcing teachers to cap homework at 10 percent of a student’s grade, beginning next month. “The policy is intended to account for the myriad urban problems facing the district’s mostly low-income, minority population,” writes the Los Angeles Times today. The LAUSD memo is more cryptic: “Varying degrees of access to academic support at home, for whatever reason, should not penalize a student so severely that it prevents the student from passing a class”

Forget literacy. We wouldn’t want hard work and knowledge getting in the way of a passing grade. HT: PP

her 95-year-old mother was detained and extensively searched last Saturday while trying to board a plane to fly to Michigan to be with family members during the final stages of her battle with leukemia. Her mother, who was in a wheelchair, was asked to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search…

Wheelchairs trigger certain protocols, including pat-downs and possible swabbing for explosives, Koshetz said. “During any part of the process, if there is an alarm, then we have to resolve that alarm,” she said…Koshetz said the procedures are the same for everyone to ensure national security.

You may view the photo of the terrorist here. Note the government’s judgment: “We have reviewed the circumstances involving this screening and determined that our officers acted professionally and according to proper procedure.”

A rescue was as easy as pressing Control C, Control V.

The French finance minister understood the gravity of the situation and warned Paulson that he had better bail out Lehman Brothers one way or another. If she had been listened to, much in the movie would never have happened. Her comments are included in the film; they run about five seconds of a two hour movie. Too bad.

Given the unusual and exigent circumstances, the Board authorized the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (New York Reserve Bank) to extend credit to JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association (JPMC Bank), Columbus, Ohio, on a nonrecourse basis to provide financing to Bear Stearns, and, if the Reserve Bank in consultation with Chairman Bernanke determined it was appropriate, to other primary securities dealers, when the Reserve Bank finds that adequate credit accommodations are not available to the borrower from other banking institutions. The credit should be secured to the satisfaction of the New York Reserve Bank and should not exceed a period of 28 days. The Board also approved the New York Reserve Bank’s recommendation that the credit to JPMC Bank to provide financing to Bear Stearns be extended at the rate for discounts and advances under the primary credit program (primary credit rate).

Change Bear Stearns to Lehman Brothers. Change JPMC to whomever. Presto change-o, problem solved. No need for lame excuses after the government’s actual decision turned out to be a catastrophe.

And BTW, Dodd-Frank has made future rescues of this nature far more difficult (see Section 13.3). Some reform!

Environmentalists sued the firework shows’ organizers and the city, contending the permitting process failed to follow the guidelines of the California Environmental Quality Act. They said the fireworks are shot off next to a marine sanctuary, generating debris that harms sea life. The ruling potentially means all organizers of fireworks shows in San Diego will have to file environmental impact reports before receiving city permits…”I don’t think La Jolla (Cove fireworks) should happen this year — or ever,” Gonzalez said…

Alex Roth, a spokesman for Mayor Jerry Sanders, said the city would appeal the ruling. He also lashed out against environmental lawyer Marco Gonzalez, who filed the suit at the heart of Quinn’s ruling. “Marco Gonzalez’ bizarre crusade to stop fireworks on the Fourth of July is truly shameless, especially considering he’s also seeking hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to cover his legal fees,” Roth said. “What’s next, a lawsuit against swimmers for polluting the ocean with their suntan lotion?”

California being what it is, the answer to that is probably yes. After that, we recommend a lawsuit to prohibit some other forms of pollution. We especially like the idea that the taxpayers are billed for freak shows like this.

Two leading makers of lighting products are showcasing LED bulbs that are bright enough to replace energy-guzzling 100-watt light bulbs set to disappear from stores in January….The new bulbs will also be expensive — about $50 each

The people in government who have gotten us into this poisonous mess are, shall we say, not the brightest bulbs on the circuit. Extra fun bonus: not only poison, but poison for US jobs.

I’d like confess my sins. I drive a Chevy Tahoe. It gets 15 miles to the gallon in the city. While some people have SUVs to haul their large families around, it’s just me driving by myself to work every day. I have a number of TVs in my high house and leave them on just about all day, every day. I often turn the water on in the shower, then I walk downstairs to maybe grab breakfast, leave the water running, then I go back upstairs to take a shower. I buy 24 packs of bottled water at a time. Then I throw those bottles away without recycling. In the winter I crank the heat up to 75 or 76. All the light bulbs in my house are still the old school, less efficient incandescent bulbs. Those are my eco-sins. I’m confessing them to you

Of course, the anchor could always trade in his Tahoe for a ticket on one of those ridiculous high-speed trains the administration is hot for. Oops, in China, where the infrastructure is so swell, “the government cut bullet-train speeds 30 mph to improve safety, energy efficiency and affordability.” Ah, life in the fantasy world. It must be so pleasant.

the city says the Girl Scouts Abigail and Caitlin Mills continued to sell Girl Scout cookies from a stand in front of their home. A neighbor complained anonymously because of all the people and the traffic and the dogs barking at all the people and the traffic. “Based on this complaint, the city of Hazelwood had to take action,” says spokesman Tim Davidson. He says it is also against city code to sell products from home.

In other news, another municipality has come up with a novel proposal for a new federal tax. Here’s the mayor. No surprise.

You could say that requiring Americans to remove pretty much all of the light bulbs now in use and replace them with bulbs that people don’t want is the ultimate in nanny statism, except that nannies don’t generally poison the children in their care

We looked at the CFL issue a while back, but didn’t have that line or a picture of the HazMat suit.

* Do not use a vacuum cleaner to clean up the breakage. This will spread the mercury vapor and dust throughout the area and could potentially contaminate the vacuum.

* Keep people and pets away from the breakage area until the cleanup is complete.

* Ventilate the area by opening windows, and leave the area for 15 minutes before returning to begin the cleanup. Mercury vapor levels will be lower by then.

* For maximum protection and if you have them, wear rubber gloves to protect your hands from the sharp glass.

* Carefully remove the larger pieces and place them in a secure closed container, preferably a glass container with a metal screw top lid and seal like a canning jar.1 A glass jar with a good seal works best to contain any mercury vapors inside.

* Next, begin collecting the smaller pieces and dust. You can use two stiff pieces of paper such as index cards or playing cards to scoop up pieces.

* Pat the area with the sticky side of duct tape, packing tape or masking tape to pick up fine particles. Wipe the area with a wet wipe or damp paper towel to pick up even finer particles.

* Put all waste and materials into the glass container, including all material used in the cleanup that may have been contaminated with mercury. Label the container as “Universal Waste – broken lamp.”

* Remove the container with the breakage and cleanup materials from your home. This is particularly important if you do not have a glass container.

* Continue ventilating the room for several hours.

* Wash your hands and face.

* Take the glass container with the waste material to a facility that accepts “universal waste” for recycling. To determine where your municipality has made arrangements for recycling of this type of waste, call your municipal office or find your town in this list municipal collection sites…

* When a break happens on carpeting, homeowners may consider removing throw rugs or the area of carpet where the breakage occurred as a precaution, particularly if the rug is in an area frequented by infants, small children or pregnant women.

* Finally, if the carpet is not removed, open the window to the room during the next several times you vacuum the carpet to provide good ventilation.

In September GE closed its last US factory making Edison’s light bulbs. Something simple has been replaced by something vastly more complicated, toxic, and expensive. America, as we enter 2011. (HT: Mark Steyn)

PISA scores are on a scale, with 500 as the average. Two-thirds of students in participating countries score between 400 and 600.

On the math test last year, students in Shanghai scored 600, in Singapore 562, in Germany 513, and in the United States 487…the Shanghai students performed in a class by themselves…average math scores of American students put them below 30 other countries.

In reading, Shanghai students scored 556, ahead of second-place Korea with 539. The United States scored 500 and came in 17th, putting it on par with students in the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and several other countries.

In science, Shanghai students scored 575. In second place was Finland, where the average score was 554. The United States scored 502 — in 23rd place

Is any of this surprising to you? Why? After all, the Chinese are pretty focused on getting ahead in the world, and US schools focus on other things. Consider what American professors and grad students spend time on. We’re giving away the future, for no good reason.

Final point: to be fair, China has been known to cut corners from time to time, so it may be that the students tested were not an entirely representative sample. But it’s not China’s performance we’re worried about; it’s that of the United States.

“Classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. Government authority…Viewing or downloading still classified documents from unclassified government computers creates a security violation”

As the man said, “better to remain silent and be thought a fool…”

So the first thing the Senate does is to pass overwhelmingly a new and expensive set of regulations, with 15 Republicans in support. Amazingly, the bill contains explicitly unconstitutional taxes (since taxes have to originate in the House). And coming down the tracks is another bill increasing Washington bureaucrats’ regulation of salad bars and Coke machines in schools from Miami to Missoula. Lawmakers and their strategists seem to have plenty of time on their hands to do things like decrying hyper-partisanship in endless speeches and position papers.

But Congress still can’t get around to preventing the tax increases scheduled to begin in a month. (On the plus side, the GOP won’t be allowing any further Senate votes until taxes are dealt with.)

The Olive Garden restaurant chain has a comparable, though somewhat larger number of employees. Its management trainees go through a 12-15 week training course. By contrast, the TSA “does not have documented standard processes to update training…the staff is encouraged to simply sign off on the materials and receive credit for taking the courses without providing evidence of reading or understanding the information.”

The CEO of the restaurant company’s parent has been in the business for over 40 years, going back to the time that he founded Red Lobster. The CEO of the TSA is a lawyer and former FBI agent who has never managed an enterprise of any size.

A restaurant has to be customer-friendly or you won’t come back. In contrast, the TSA views the traveling public, not as customers, but as suspects. (Profiling is the cure for that, by the way.)

So you have a government agency with quasi-police powers, staffed with poorly trained employees, and led by a guy with no experience running a large organization. GIGO. Question: how much additional power do you want to give to the government?

people talk about, well, why don’t we profile? Of course we don’t do that here in the U.S.

Rubbish. We all profile, apparently except for these fools, and it is a good thing. Cops profile and it prevents crimes. Doctors profile, and it saves lives. There is no wisdom without the ability to generalize and differentiate. It’s sad how far this country has fallen.

If Democrats want to run on this in 2012, good luck to them.

A leading Israeli airport security expert says the Canadian government has wasted millions of dollars to install “useless” imaging machines at airports across the country. “I don’t know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747,” Rafi Sela told parliamentarians…

“That’s why we haven’t put them in our airport,” Sela said, referring to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, which has some of the toughest security in the world. Sela, former chief security officer of the Israel Airport Authority and a 30-year veteran in airport security and defence technology, helped design the security at Ben Gurion…

Sela testified it makes more sense to create a “trusted traveller” system so pre-approved low-risk passengers can move through an expedited screening process. That would leave more resources in the screening areas

But a “trusted traveler” system would cost very little and would be more effective — can’t have that.

In some ways the strangest aspect of the TSA clown comedy is that apparently nobody thought twice about the magnitude and grossness of the PR disaster caused by groping a good number of the 2 million Americans who get on a flight every day. Unbelievable.

120,000 years ago, the Cancun coastline was swamped by a 7-foot (2.1-meter) rise in sea level in a few decades. A week from now at that Mexican resort, frustrated negotiators will try again to head off a new global deluge. The disappointment of Copenhagen…has raised doubts about whether the long-running, 194-nation talks can ever agree on a legally binding treaty…

the Cancun negotiators hope at least for agreement on a “green fund” to disburse aid that developed countries promised at Copenhagen — $100 billion a year by 2020 — for developing countries to adapt to a changing climate by building seawalls and shifting farming patterns

15,000 bureaucrats attended the grueling negotiations in Bali a few years ago — negotiations that led to “a brilliant strategy to unite the world.” BTW, they laugh while they’re picking your pocket.

(At least they’re laughing a little less in Chicago.)

Jacqueline Johnson knows what it’s like to be shunned because of her weight. In the early 2000s fat activism was edging into existence, and Johnson, a weight studies scholar, was deemed too skinny to take part. “I tried to join a fat activist group, and I was rejected because I was not of size,” she remembers…

GWU has offered a class devoted specifically to Fat Studies, and its diverse enrollment is an important victory for the subject. Fat Studies scholars say their mission is to promote weight awareness and acceptance among populations of all types. The sociological study of obesity has been creeping into academia for over a decade, often as a subtopic of Women’s Studies or Health Sciences. But only recently has weight become a subject of study in its own right. “There would be no Fat Studies if there were no obesity epidemic,” says Esther Rothblum, a lesbian studies professor at the University of California, San Diego

It’s sad to know you can’t join a fat activist group if you’re not “of size,” but it is encouraging that the Fat Studies program at George Washington University has a “diverse enrollment.” America today — yikes!!! HT: Jeff G

But here’s what’s really pathetic. The Washington Post, in its final pre-election poll, asked over a thousand voters which comedian they would prefer as President of the United States, and only a third of your fellow citizens opted out of the ridiculous question. So perhaps we really do have the government we deserve.

Federal copy editors are demanding the city change its 250,900 street signs…from the all-caps style used for more than a century to ones that capitalize only the first letters. Changing BROADWAY to Broadway will save lives, the Federal Highway Administration contends in its updated Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices…At $110 per sign, it will also cost the state $27.6 million

Go away Washington-spenders-on-foolish-things, and take the FTC with you.

Six weeks before the election, President Obama couldn’t fill the ballroom at the Roosevelt Hotel, despite cheap tickets on offer. And then he was met by hecklers….

Only after I received four email invitations and two personal calls imploring me to come did I call Speaker Pelosi’s office to check the admission price. “You mean, to be in the room with the President of the United States is now on fire sale for $100?”

”Yup.”…“How many $100 givers have rsvp’d?” “Mmmm 250.” “Do we need to line up early to get in?” “That’s not necessary. Everybody will get in.” And everybody did — 450 people in a room that holds 650. Even Obama’s fire sale didn’t sell out.

The worshipful crowds were completely over-the-top and out of their minds for this guy once upon a time. He got away with promising nonsense like lowering the sea level of all the world’s oceans. Finally the Utopian Bubble has burst — but we’re all going to be paying a steep price for years to come.

The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison’s innovations in the 1870s. The remaining 200 workers at the plant here will lose their jobs…

Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China. Consisting of glass tubes twisted into a spiral, they require more hand labor, which is cheaper there. So though they were first developed by American engineers in the 1970s, none of the major brands make CFLs in the United States.

“Everybody’s jumping on the green bandwagon,” said Pat Doyle, 54, who has worked at the plant for 26 years. But “we’ve been sold out. First sold out by the government. Then sold out by GE.”…The company developed a plan to see what it would take to retrofit a plant that makes traditional incandescents into one that makes CFLs. Even with a $40 million investment and automation, the disparity in wages and other factors made it uneconomical. The new plant’s CFLs would have cost about 50 percent more than those from China, GE officials said…

In announcing the plant closure here, GE said in a news release that “a variety of energy regulations,” including those in the United States, “will soon make the familiar lighting products produced at the Winchester Plant obsolete.”

Here are some other excellent product features, as highlighted by GE itself:

CFLs, like many electrical or electronic products, can sometimes fail in a way where one of the electrical components or plastic materials will briefly produce a very irritating odor and possibly some smoke…the easiest way to eliminate any odor is to follow the same approach that one would use to eliminate any other unpleasant odor or smell. Briefly leave the immediate area if it is very irritating. Next, after waiting 10 or 15 minutes, air out the room…

Like paint, batteries, thermostats, and other hazardous household items, CFLs should be disposed of properly. Do not throw CFLs away in your household garbage…If your waste agency incinerates its garbage, you should search a wider geographic area for proper disposal options. Never send a CFL or other mercury containing product to an incinerator

So let’s see. A simple, very effective and cheap product is replaced by an inferior, more costly product, produced in a fashion that eliminates American jobs, and that creates completely unnecessary bad environmental consequences.. And all so some nincompoops can feel good about themselves. What’s a good name for a scam of this nature? Ah yes, the “green economy.”

At the three minute mark of this video by Paddy Hirsch, you will understand how reckless securitizations, bad government policies, and a deeply flawed credit rating system, combined with a party atmosphere on Wall Street and a reckless global investor class to create a good portion of the mess we’re in today.

as we have said countless times before, Governor Crist is running for the United States Senate as a Republican. He will not run as an Independent or as a No Party Affiliation. The Governor is proud of his conservative credentials and stands firmly behind the principles of limited government and more personal freedom, the bedrock values of the Republican Party. He is proud to be a member of the Party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. This should completely and utterly put to rest any of the unfounded rumors coming from the Rubio campaign that Governor Crist would run as anything other than the Republican that he is.

The ads against Crist write themselves. And as Jay Cost noted: “it would be hard to come up with a strategy that goes against the zeitgeist as much as Crist’s plan to run as an Independent.” These are strange times indeed. HT: Ace