6/02/2007

Bush Administration Looking to Nominate Women or Minorities to Supreme Court

Jan Crawford Greenburg has all the details in a very long article. Given her uncanny ability to get information for her recent book on the Supreme Court, I would assume that she knows what she is talking about.

Owen, Rogers Brown Back on Short List

Leading Senate Democrats are already warning against solidly conservative nominees, and that could make confirmation difficult in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Still, some of Bush's political advisers believe he would be better off tapping a strong conservative who would rally the base -- especially a nominee with a compelling life story who would be difficult for moderate Senate Democrats to oppose.

In that camp are federal appeals court Judges Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown. Both were filibustered by Senate Democrats after Bush nominated them as appellate judges and were eventually confirmed after Senate leaders struck a compromise on judicial nominations.

Either could have been a likely replacement for O'Connor in 2005, but leading Senate Republicans told the White House not to nominate them because they were seen as too controversial at the time. Now that both are on the federal bench, the White House has put them back on a working short list.

Of the two, Owen is the best known in the White House and is generally considered less controversial than the more outspoken Brown.

Owen, like Brown, also has gotten high marks from her colleagues on the federal appeals court. But Owen's friendship with Karl Rove could hurt her, especially in a White House vulnerable to charges of cronyism.

The White House also is looking at Chicago-based federal appeals court Judge Diane Sykes, who is considered conservative but less controversial, sources close to the process said. But Sykes is not as well known inside the administration, which is a strike against her, White House sources said.

Bush does not want to repeat the mistake of his father, who nominated the unknown David Souter, believing he was conservative only to see Souter quickly become one of the Court's most reliable liberal votes. . . . .

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6/01/2007

Why hasn't someone thought of this before?: Using al-Qaeda's tactics against them

China takes another move towards Capitalism, moves more towards honoring contracts

Another Review of Freedomnomics

Fred Thompson: A small government conservative

5/31/2007

I believe that the Tennessee Senate has passed a bill getting rid of gun free zones in parks

Fred Thompson Quits "Law & Order," Moving towards running for President

"NASA Chief Questions Whether Global Warming Is a Problem"

the space agency's administrator [Michael D. Griffin] . . . told a national radio audience that he doubted whether global warming was really a problem. . . .


The most troublesome discussion in this news story is that "NASA initiated damage." I guess that political correctness requires that the record be expunged.

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Not a gun free zone: College Students in Dorms in Louisiana will be allowed to keep owning guns.

Dick Morris & Eileen McGann Explain Hillary's Views on Iraq: It is all clear to me now!

FOR those who are too obtuse to understand Sen. Hillary Clinton's simple and clear position on Iraq, the following is an attempt to summarize it:

* She voted in the Senate for H.J. Res. 114, the "Authorization of the Use of Military Force Against Iraq," in October 2002. But now she wants to repeal it. Why? Because, according to Hillary, President Bush misinterpreted the "Authorization of the Use of Military Force Against Iraq" resolution to mean that the use of military force against Iraq had been authorized by Congress.
* At the time of her vote, she stated that her vote for the troop authorization bill was made "with conviction . . . as being in the best interests of the country."

* But once the war became unpopular, Hillary claimed that she hadn't really voted to send troops to Iraq when she voted for the resolution authorizing the use of military force in Iraq.

No, according to Sen. Clinton, all the "Authorization of the Use of Military Force Against Iraq" really did was to toughen the support we were already giving to United Nations inspectors who were looking for weapons of mass destruction. Although the text of the resolution never mentions a single word about strengthening the U.N. inspectors, Hillary believed that was the purpose of the bill. . . .

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Dennis Miller just kills me

5/29/2007

New Op-ed FoxNews.com: Moore's Myths Sicko

Craig Newmark reviews my new book Freedomnomics

Craig Newmark provides a much appreciated and very nice review of my new book Freedomnomics here.

Freedomnomics focuses on incentives. It presents a wonderfully rich set of examples of how people respond to incentives. No background in economics is necessary to understand and enjoy these examples. . . .


For those interested, for a short time they can still obtain a free copy of the book here.

Side note: Craig's wife has had her blog blognapped. It is an absolutely horrendous story. It looks like things are getting fixed, but it has not been a pleasant process.

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5/28/2007

Well at least South Africa put into place those tough new gun control laws

France Paying Immigrants to go home

Even if few people take advantage of this offer, I think that it will be very important for a reason that I haven't seen anyone note: how upset can the immigrants in France be if you can't pay them to go back home? There is obviously a lot of discontent and rioting in France, but how can people maintain the intensity of their anger when they are admitting with their feet that France is much better than the alternative and they are refusing to even accept a payment to return home.

New French President Nicolas Sarkozy made immigration a central issue of his campaign. Now, his new minister for immigration and national identity says its time to start paying immigrants to leave the country.

France is home to over 5 million immigrants -- and the new conservative-led government doesn't plan on making things any more comfortable for them. While the new regime in Paris is determined to curb illegal immigration, it is also looking to encourage legal migrants to reconsider their decision to stay in France -- by paying them to go back home.
New immigration minister, Brice Hortefeux, confirmed on Wednesday that the government is planning to offer incentives to more immigrants to return home voluntarily. "We must increase this measure to help voluntary return. I am very clearly committed to doing that," Hortefeux said in an interview with RFI radio.

Under the scheme, Paris will provide each family with a nest egg of €6,000 ($8,000) for when they go back to their country of origin. A similar scheme, which was introduced in 2005 and 2006, was taken up by around 3,000 families. . . . . .

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5/27/2007

More On Celbrating Rachel Carson's 100th Birthday

Along with a thirty-week run on The New York Times bestseller list, the book was discussed in the Senate, debated by Congressional committees, analyzed by the presidential Science Advisory Committee and widely covered on television. All of which was a deep pity, because Silent Spring was an extremely dishonest and flawed piece of work.

Carson's book was rife with omissions, misrepresentations, and errors. She neglected to mention that the spraying of Huckin's bird sanctuary was accompanied by fuel oil, which would have harmed the birds in and of itself. The fact that DDT had eliminated malaria in the northern hemisphere went unnoted. The threat of cancer (Carson herself had been diagnosed with breast cancer while at work on the book) was overemphasized -- to put it mildly -- on no scientific basis.

But far worse was the tone of hysteria permeating the entire work. DDT was not simply a chemical compound, to be analyzed dispassionately like any other. No - it was representation of absolute evil, a demonic threat to all forms of life, one that had to be ousted from the environment at all costs. Such an overwrought treatment is perhaps understandable from a woman effectively writing under the gun of cancer, but it's scarcely acceptable in a work purporting to be a serious scientific study. . . . .

As Coburn is well aware, you do not pass resolutions in favor of people who were involved in the deaths of millions, however inadvertently. . . . .

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