Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Couldn't agree more.

What's TBI?

The majority of the founders of the US were of what religion? The Majority of Americans today are of what religion? Please tell me of any majority muslim nation where religious minorities enjoy the same level of freedoms religious minorities enjoy here.

Yes, the same Founding Fathers who added freedom of religion AND separation of church and state.

Sorry, I just don't see Christianity the religion as being anything special in terms of compassion or enlightenment.  Maybe I'd change my mind if they'd cut out the "moral values" (coded speech for anti-gay bigotry and anti-abortion activism) stuff, but unfortunately I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Anyway, you asked for my fair criticism of Islam and I gave it to you.

Rogt,

I'd like to hear what you think is fair criticism of islam would be, if any.

I certainly take issue with Islam's treatment of women and gays, which isn't all that different from Christianity's.

MARC: The issue is one of aiding and abetting the enemy-- in time of war.  Are you asserting a free speech right to publish military secrets?!?

ROG: If the secrets in question are war crimes (which Abu Ghraib and the secret torture prisons 100% qualify as), absolutely!

MARC:  Again, Abu Ghraib does not belong in this conversation.  AG was revealed by the US Army of its own accord, yet you keep bringing it up in this context.  IMHO it would be appropriate if you did not keep bringing it up in this context.

Even though it was revealed by the military, IIRC you still considered it irresponsible for the media to publish the photos.

Concerning the secret detention centers, your point is rational.  Concerning divulging our secret program getting our side into Iraqi press it is not and concerning our monitoring the enemy's financial flows, it is not.

Thank you for acknowledging my point about the detention centers.  Monitoring finances (if that's all it was) doesn't seem criminal to me, but I'm less sure about the disinformation campaign in the Iraqi press.

Quote
ROG You asked if it were possible for the truth to be inflammatory or offensive, and I provided you with examples.

MARC  Ummm, , , no I did not ask that at all.

Umm...  Yes you did.

How can the truth be deliberately and needlessly inflammatory?

I'll give you a better answer.  The truth can be inflammatory when there's a deliberate effort to present a set of cherry-picked facts to make one point of view appear indisputable.  This is the exact same criticism a lot of right-wingers have about Michael Moore's movies (which I myself have never claimed to be anything other than "the truth" as MM sees it).  I too could easily come up with a set of facts that, by themselves, would make Jews look completely violent, racist, and backwards (isn't the Arab media accused of this all the time?)  So while I don't dispute the factual accuracy of the ads, they don't exactly qualify as "truth" as far as I'm concerned.

"So are you saying that "suppression of free speech" would have been justified in the above cases because the troops' lives may have been put in extra danger"

The issue is one of aiding and abetting the enemy-- in time of war.  Are you asserting a free speech right to publish military secrets?!?

If the secrets in question are war crimes (which Abu Ghraib and the secret torture prisons 100% qualify as), absolutely!

" I'm just trying to make the point that it's perfectly valid to accuse somebody of presenting "the truth" in a deliberately inflammatory or irresponsible manner."

What does this have to do with a post that is about true free speech being punished by an University ?!?

You asked if it were possible for the truth to be inflammatory or offensive, and I provided you with examples.

Look, we both agree that the ads shouldn't be banned.  So stop with this fantasy like the newspaper was just innocently presenting "information" instead of knowingly publishing something intentionally hostile and offensive.

Dr. Paul's name seems to be popping up everywhere and I figured that someone on this board would have some straight forward opinions/information about him.

I did notice that of all the Republican candidates, he was the only one willing to rule out using nuclear weapons against Iran.

Were it an ad attacking christianity, I doubt Rogt would defend offended christians.....

It would depend on the details of the ad.   But let's be honest: it's not like Christians in the US have to worry about being attacked or mistaken for a terrorist and thrown in Guantanamo.  That this is a real concern for Muslims is a crucial difference.

I doubt the ad qualifies as "unprotected harassment".  If I were that Islamic student group at Tufts, I would instead make the point that while the content of the ad may be "factual" the newspaper is being deliberately and needlessly inflammatory by publishing it, especially at the time they chose to.

Woof CCP,

That these women are mostly single mothers struggling financially means the abortion issue affects them more than other groups.  Upper-middle class women seem to be more vocal about the issue, but any restrictions on abortion rights are bound to affect them much less than women of lesser financial means.

But even if Hillary's appeals were all about financial benefits for these women, what would make this any worse than every other group (defense contractors, banks, drug companies, religious organizations, etc.) that's lobbying for what amounts to financial benefits or favorable legistlation?  The comments in your earlier post made it out like women actually voting in their own self-interest (which of course they'd only do because they couldn't find a man who'd "meet their needs") only proves what a bunch of gold-diggers they really are.

Rog

Woof GM,

You can interpret my statements about the situation in Venezuela however you want, but by making the discussion about me you're only acknowledging that you have no real response to the substantive points in my post.

Rog

Yeah, I won't say I love Chavez or "rule by decree", but I believe in being honest.  Simply refusing to renew RCTV's broadcast license sounds like something the government was well within it's authority to do and does not constitute an attack on free speech.

I too look forward to any comments ccp may have about this.

Rog

The mass killers are the abberant and thus media intensive form of killer in the US. The subculture of gangsterism in urban minority centers fuels most of our violent crime statistics. When it is safer for a young black male to be in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan than a civilian in Washington D.C. it's a sign that something has gone very wrong.

No disagreement from me here.

Seriously, what can account for our exceptional rate of these mass murder-suicides?  What's changed here during the past 15 years or so that could explain it?  It's true that these mass killers are basically doing what they see in Quentin Tarantino movies and the Grand Theft Auto games (which I personally love BTW), but I don't know if these alone are enough.

Ummm, for the record actually he didn't call you a name.  Also worth considering is that when you posted this

"Coming from a president who thinks pre-emptive wars, assassinations, secret imprisonment, and torture are all a-OK, his presence at the service was fairly inappropriate.  If he didn't enjoy effective immunity from the consequences of his policies, it might occur to him that the above could just as easily be said about the masses of dead Iraqis. , , ,  could it be that why stuff like this is happening with increasing frequency in the US is a question that Bush and his speechwriters would prefer not to examine too closely?"

you open the door to his comment  smiley

If GM (or anybody else) disagrees with what I posted then I'm happy to have that discussion, but his implication is that I was simply looking for an excuse to bash poor W, which is a non-response to what I consider a perfectly valid point.

I am delighted to see that you apparently recognize that there is a personal Consitutional right to regulated gun ownership. Have I understood you correctly on this?   

Yes.  I don't believe I've ever denied that this right exists or opposed it.

I think you will find that most "pro-gun" people can be similarly described.  The problem is that there is a very substantial movement in this country, found principally in the Democratic Party, MSM and academia that is passionately for the disarmament or virtual disarmament of the American people.  These people interpret the Second Amerndment as a matter of the rights of the States to have a National Guard or something like that.   These people simply seek to incrementally increase the burdens and irrationality of the various regulatory schemes of the Feds and the States to eventually destroy gun rights in America-- the very same path as was taken in England and Australia.

Well, I can't speak for those people.  As for the UK and Australia, if (I assume) they have less gun violence as a result of their bans and most of those people feel their country is a safer, better place to live as a result, then how is that a bad thing?

But for the disingenuous bad faith of these people pretending to be for reasonable regulation when they actually seek disarmament of the American people I think you would find that the NRA (of which I am a member) would be much more flexible.

Do you see the NRA as being in favor of reasonable regulation?  IMO, they take a pretty fundamentalist view of the Second Amendment I'm not sure is realistic.  I see them as being to the Second Amendment like AQ is to Islam.

The truth is gun control does not work. Those who want guns, will attain them.

I don't know about this.  Isn't the US in the minority of industrialized nations when it comes to gun ownership rights?  I agree that it's impossible to keep somebody from getting ahold of a gun if they really want one, but at same time I don't think this should be taken as a blanket invalidation of any attempt at gun control.  I personally think anti-drug laws are stupid, but there's no denying that they result in less drug use.

As far as non-citizens attaining weapons, I'm split on the subject. I know my inlaws (non-citizens) I would trust with my life with a gun, others not so much. What I believe for certain is that if someone on that campus had been armed besides the rentacops I doubt we would be discussing the 32 dead.

It's hard to say.  I ask about immigrant gun ownership because I remember then-AG John Ashcroft specifically stepping into block any investigation of gun purchases by immigrants in the aftermath of 9/11.  Of all the immigrants' rights being put on the chopping block after 9/11, appeasing the pro-gun lobby was still considered important enough that the sanctity of their right to anonymously purchase guns was considered not to be f-d with.

Not sure I follow here.  You ask what we have done as a society to lessen the chances of such incidents, yet we are not to discuss allowing the population to defend itself vs. disarming the population? 

I'm not saying anybody is "not to discuss" anything, but that I see more concern for the possible threat to the Second Amendment as unlimited freedom to own/carry guns than doing anything to prevent these incidents from happening.

For the record, I am not against guns and I support our right to (some limited) gun ownership.  I just don't buy this NRA fantasy of an armed-to-the-teeth (but educated and responsible) population somehow being the solution to all violent crime.

From Bush's comments at the convocation last night:

Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they’re gone—and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates, and a grieving nation.

Coming from a president who thinks pre-emptive wars, assassinations, secret imprisonment, and torture are all a-OK, his presence at the service was fairly inappropriate.  If he didn't enjoy effective immunity from the consequences of his policies, it might occur to him that the above could just as easily be said about the masses of dead Iraqis.

There's also this line.  Again, fairly predictable:

It’s impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering

Really?  Or could it be that why stuff like this is happening with increasing frequency in the US is a question that Bush and his speechwriters would prefer not to examine too closely?  What have we as a society done since Columbine to make such incidents any less likely to occur?

This thread (to this forum's credit) started out with expressions of shock and sympathy for the victims, but now it's all but devolved into a discussion about fears that incidents like this will increase the appeal of gun control laws.  IMO, that says quite a bit.

Ummm, still waiting for an answer to my query about where that 650,000 number you bandied about came from , , ,

Oh, sorry.  From the same link I posted above:

"The second survey[2][3][4] published on 11 October 2006, estimated 654,965 excess deaths related to the war, or 2.5% of the population, through the end of June 2006. The new study applied similar methods and involved surveys between May 20 and July 10, 2006.[4] More households were surveyed, allowing for a 95% confidence interval of 392,979 to 942,636 excess Iraqi deaths."

When you said you considered the Lancet study's methodology "agenda driven" I assume you knew I meant that one.

As for your most recent post, I'm puzzled-- you said you weren't here, but you know that it wasn't discussed here-- even though I am able from memory to comment that I read that the data and its interpretation were suspect

From what I read, there was little discussion of it.  Can you tell me frist-hand what you saw/read or what kind of coverage it got here?

and GM was able at the drop of a cyber-hat post a three year old article that was directly on point? 

Did you read the researchers' response to that article, which I quoted in my last post? 

If multiple hijacked aircraft slammed into buildings in Africa or Asia, resulting in 3,000 deaths in one day, i'm sure it would be newsworthy and spur discussions in North America.

I'll grant that 3,000 people being killed in a single terrorist attack is a pretty exceptional event, but I don't think that alone can account for the saturation media coverage, scrolling lists of casualties, etc. we saw for weeks afterwards.  You'd have to have been living in a cave to not know about it.  When earthquakes killed 10,000+ in Iran or when the tsunami hit Southeast Asia and killed well over 100,000 people, was the media response even comparable?

The British medical journal The Lancet estimated (back in September) that 650,000+ Iraqis have been killed as a result of our invasion.  I was in London the day the report was released, so I don't know how this was covered in the US (although I can guess), but I can tell you this story dominated news in the UK for the entire week I was there.

Anyway, I would argue that while the extensive coverage of 9/11 was due to more than just the nationality of the targets, there is an unspoken assumption in most US news that American lives are more valuable than non-American lives.

"Let's face facts. If the news on the morning of September 11 was that 3,000 Tanzanians or Burmese had been killed, they wouldn't have broken in on regularly scheduled programming, or cancelled football games, and there'd be no conversation about it the next day."

Do you consider this statement untrue?

Rog

Nobody's saying you shouldn't be allowed to think whatever you want about being gay even if it were proven to be 100% genetic.  What kids need to be educated on is that being gay is nothing to kill yourself or beat somebody else up over.  It's possible that no amount of education will ever stop these kinds of things from happening, but without some effort to present kids with objective informations about this topic, all some of them will hear are the ignorant (mainly religious) views of their parents.  Note that there is a difference between telling kids "there's nothing sick or wrong about being gay" (objective education) and "being gay is great and you should try it" (obvious propaganda).

Being black is has always been known to be 100% genetic and there are still plenty of racists.  OTOH, being Jewish (or any religion) is 100% a matter of choice, and I'm pretty sure you have a zero-tolerance policy towards anti-Semitism.  So what's so special or scared about anti-gay bigotry that makes it untouchable by the state?

Woof Rog:

I honest doubt that "honest discussion" is what this was about.  My strong hunch is that anything other than complete neutrality or approval of homosexuality would have been virulently slammed as "homophobic bigotry"-- not just a "don't pick on the gays" lesson in live and let live.   

Maybe, but this article published exactly ZERO actual details, so you're basically taking their word that the seminar was some attempt to convert all these kids to homosexuality behind their parents' backs, and I see no evidence of this, at least not from that article.

"The conclusion from U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf found that it is reasonable, indeed there is an obligation, for public schools to teach young children to accept and endorse homosexuality." 

"Accept and endorse"?!? 

What you're quoting from the article here:

The conclusion from U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf found that it is reasonable, indeed there is an obligation, for public schools to teach young children to accept and endorse homosexuality.

Was NOT, repeat NOT from any statement made by this judge and is purely WorldNetDaily's interpretation of his statements, which I posted.  Is there's a transcript of the court proceedings posted somewhere in this discussion that I'm not aware of?

And WTF does "accept and endorse" mean?  I don't think kids have to be proponents of homosexuality to think there's nothing wrong with being gay, at least to the point where they don't see it as a reason to kill themselves or beat somebody else up.  Surely we can all agree on this.

If this were a case of teaching kids why it's wrong to hate somebody because they're black (or Jewish), then we wouldn't even be having this discussion. But for some reason anti-gay bigotry is still a-OK as far as a lot of people are concerned.

What's the source of this?  I find it a little hard to believe that if something like this actually happened, it went down the way this article makes it out.

Officials at Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Ill., have ordered their 14-year-old freshman class into a "gay" indoctrination seminar, after having them sign a confidentiality agreement promising not to tell their parents.

"This is unbelievable," said Matt Barber, policy director for cultural issues for Concerned Women for America. "It's not enough that students at Deerfield High are being exposed to improper and offensive material relative to unhealthy and high-risk homosexual behavior, but they've essentially been told by teachers to lie to their parents about it."

In what CWA called a "shocking and brazen act of government abuse of parental rights," the school's officials required the 14-year-olds to attend a "Gay Straight Alliance Network" panel discussion led by "gay" and "lesbian" upperclassmen during a "freshman advisory" class which "secretively featured inappropriate discussions of a sexual nature in promotion of high-risk homosexual behaviors."

"This goes to the heart of the homosexual agenda," Barber said. "The professional propagandists in the 'gay-rights' lobby know the method all too well. If you can maintain control of undeveloped and impressionable youth and spoon-feed them misinformation, lies and half-truths about dangerous, disordered and extremely risky behaviors, then you can control the future and ensure that those behaviors are not only fully accepted, but celebrated."

He said not only is forcing students to be exposed to the pro-homosexual propaganda bad enough, but then school officials further required that students sign the "confidentiality agreement" through which they promised not to tell anyone – including their own parents – about the seminar.

Barber said that also aligns with the goals of the disinformation campaign being run by those in the pro-homosexual camp. "That's what homosexual activists from GSA are attempting to do, and that's what DHS is clearly up to as well."

The situation, according to district Supt. George Fornero, was partly "a mistake."

He told CWA, the nation's largest public policy women's organization, that requiring children to sign the confidentiality agreement wasn't right and the district would be honest with parents in the future about such seminars. But CWA noted that even after the district was caught, parents still were being told they were not welcome to be at the "freshman advisory" and they were not allowed to have access to materials used in compiling the activist curriculum.

Barber noted the damage being done is significant.

"Until DHS and other government schools across the country are made to stop promoting the homosexual agenda, kids will continue to be exposed to – and encouraged to participate in – a lifestyle that places them at high risk for life-threatening disease, depression and spiritual despair," he said.

It's not the first situation where WND has reported on schools teaching homosexuality to children.

In Massachusetts after a school repeatedly advocated for the homosexual lifestyle to students in elementary grades, several parents sued, only to have the federal judge order the "gay" agenda taught to the Christians.

The conclusion from U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf found that it is reasonable, indeed there is an obligation, for public schools to teach young children to accept and endorse homosexuality.

Wolf essentially adopted the reasoning in a brief submitted by a number of homosexual-advocacy groups, who said "the rights of religious freedom and parental control over the upbringing of children … would undermine teaching and learning…"

David and Tonia Parker and Joseph and Robin Wirthlin, who have children of school age in Lexington, Mass., brought the lawsuit. They alleged district officials and staff at Estabrook Elementary School violated state law and civil rights by indoctrinating their children about a lifestyle they, as Christians, teach is immoral.

"Wolf's ruling is every parent's nightmare. It goes to extraordinary lengths to legitimize and reinforce the 'right' (and even the duty) of schools to normalize homosexual behavior to even the youngest of children," said a statement from the pro-family group Mass Resistance.

An appeal of that decision is pending.

The judge concluded that even allowing Christians to withdraw their children from classes or portions of classes where their religious beliefs were being violated wasn't a reasonable expectation.

"An exodus from class when issues of homosexuality or same-sex marriage are to be discussed could send the message that gays, lesbians, and the children of same-sex parents are inferior and, therefore, have a damaging effect on those students," he opined.
"Under the Constitution public schools are entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens in our democracy," the judge wrote. "Diversity is a hallmark of our nation. It is increasingly evident that our diversity includes differences in sexual orientation."

And, he said, since history "includes instances of … official discrimination against gays and lesbians … it is reasonable for public educators to teach elementary school students … different sexual orientations."

If they disagree, "the Parkers and Wirthlins may send their children to a private school …[or] may also educate their children at home," the judge said.

I dunno, Crafty. I'm not particularly inclined to treat anything off a world socialist web site as definitive, at least until they get around to dealing with the abject failure of communism along with all the attendant human tragedy.

Fortunately, you don't have to take their word for it.  From the very end of the article:

Related PDF files from the Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearings are available through the committee’s web site. http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1214

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/clim-m22.shtml

Congressional hearings detail political tampering in US climate research
By Naomi Spencer
22 March 2007

Hearings resumed March 19 in the US Congress on charges of political interference in governmental climate research. The evidence and testimony further demonstrate the lengths the Bush administration, at the behest of the oil industry, has gone to suppress scientists’ findings and confuse public opinion of climate change.

Among those testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform were prominent NASA scientist James Hansen and a former officer from NASA Public Affairs, George Deutsch. E-mails presented at the hearing confirmed that Deutsch’s responsibilities as a PA officer included preventing Hansen from speaking about climate data with reporters, a fact that Bush administration officials have repeatedly denied.

Hansen, who is the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), recounted several instances of interference. In one case, one of his staff members submitted a press release based on a GISS paper that found the ocean was less effective at removing human-made carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than had previously been estimated. Public Affairs decided that this story could not be provided to the media.

Another staff member, Hansen testified, was made to attend a “practice” press conference, where he was asked whether anything could be done to stem the accelerating loss of sea ice. When he suggested, “We could reduce emissions of greenhouse gases,” he was told by officials, “That’s unacceptable!” Hansen told the House committee that Public Affairs had insisted, “scientists are not allowed to say anything that relates to policy.”

Following a public talk Hansen gave in 2004, in which he mentioned the practice of muzzling climate data, the NASA assistant administrator for public affairs traveled from headquarters to the Goddard Space Flight Center and gave what Hansen called an “oral ‘dressing down’ of the professional writer at Goddard Public Affairs who had informed me about this practice.”

The writer, Hansen said, “was admonished to ‘mind his own business.’ ” Such reprimands and instructions, Hansen said, are delivered orally so as to leave no paper trail. This way, “If NASA headquarters Public Affairs is queried by media about such abuses,” Hansen testified, “they respond ‘that’s hearsay!,’ a legal term that seems to frighten the media.”

The deliberate lack of written records indicates that administration officials are well aware of the inappropriate and essentially illegal character of restricting scientists’ speech.

However, a series of memos and e-mails in late 2005 detailed instructions on constraining public speech, after Hansen presented GISS climate data to the American Geophysical Union. The GISS analysis demonstrated record global temperature in 2005, a finding that sparked unwanted media attention for NASA.

In response, Public Affairs issued tight regulations on Hansen, including a requirement that media interviews be approved beforehand, with NASA headquarters having “right of first refusal,” and that Hansen obtain approval of any posting on the GISS web site. Hansen testified that while these orders were delivered orally, along with a threat of “dire consequences” for non-compliance, the new Public Affairs officer over him, George Deutsch, left written descriptions of the rules.

Deutsch had worked for Bush’s reelection campaign before dropping out of college and taking the appointment for Political Affairs at NASA. Several of his e-mails presented during the hearing plainly demonstrated that NASA leadership was stifling Hansen’s contact with the press. In one, Deutsch wrote, “Senior management has asked us not to use Jim Hansen for this interview.” In another e-mail, it was discussed who could appear in Hansen’s stead to deliver Bush administration talking points: “Are [sic] main concern is hitting our messages and not getting dragged down into any discussions we shouldn’t get into.”

Hansen’s experience is by no means unique. A January survey by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that six in ten federally employed scientists experienced political interference over the past five years, and half were pressured to remove the words “climate change” and “global warming” from their work.

During the hearing, Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, ludicrously suggested that it was Hansen who was attempting to curb science and free speech. According to the New York Times, Issa claimed that by speaking out against White House efforts to inject uncertainty on global warming research, Hansen had become “an advocate for limiting the debate.” Hansen replied, “What I’m an advocate for is the scientific method.”

The White House has enormous control over scientific research via the allocation of funds. Along with the various other restrictive measures, punishment by the administration of outspoken climate researchers has also taken the form of budget cuts.

Hansen pointed out that when the Bush administration unveiled its 2007 budget, NASA’s science programs were given a funding increase of 1 percent. Yet Earth Science Research and Analysis faced a staggering 20 percent cut, which was to be enacted by cutting retroactively from the 2006 budget. Hansen remarked, “One way to avoid bad news: stop the measurements!”

“One-third of the way into fiscal year 2006,” Hansen explained, “NASA Earth Science was told to go figure out how to live with a 20-percent loss of the current year’s funds.” The cuts shelve most satellite missions and support for contracting and young scientists.

This comes at a time when NASA satellites are yielding important results. Two satellites measuring the Earth’s gravitational field, for example, found that the mass of Greenland is now decreasing by around 150 cubic kilometers of ice each year. West Antarctica’s ice depletion registered a similar loss. The area of ice sheets with melting has increased substantially, resulting in a doubling in the flow of ice streams, and the area in the Arctic Ocean with summer sea ice has decreased by 20 percent over the past two and a half decades.

Since the first part of the hearings on January 30, the panel has received eight boxes of relevant documents from the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). The documents, released amidst Monday’s testimony, strongly support the charges of Hansen and others that the White House made an organized and deliberate effort to mislead the public about the dangers posed by climate change through the editing of government climate reports.

One of those charged with this undertaking was former CEQ chief of staff Philip Cooney, who resigned from his position in 2005 after the New York Times reported that he had made hundreds of edits to climate reports. After quitting, Cooney quickly landed a job at ExxonMobil; prior to his appointment, he was the “climate team leader” for the oil industry’s lobbying agency, the American Petroleum Institute (API).

In his congressional testimony March 19, Cooney said his work was “solely to promote the public policies of President Bush and his administration.” Indeed, the present administration, with its inseparable linkages to the oil industry, appointed him for precisely this purpose.

Documents showed at least 181 edits to the administration’s Strategic Plan of the Climate Change Science Program made by Cooney other CEQ officials, aimed specifically at exaggerating scientific uncertainties, and at least 113 edits to the same document for the express purpose of diminishing the importance of the human contribution to global warming.

Cooney also inserted numerous references to supposed possible benefits of climate change, while removing references to taking action to combat global warming based on the scientific evidence. He deleted references to the threat climate change posed to human health, society, and habitation, edits that he justified by saying he felt they “risked overstating human health impacts.”

He also removed references in the administration’s plan to the comprehensive National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change after an interest group funded by the API sued the government over the report’s linking of global warming to the burning of fossil fuels.

Significantly, Cooney deleted any reference to average surface temperature reconstructions, which indicate they have been rising over the last millennium. In multiple places, he changed the words “global change” to “climate variability and change” to suggest that the current warming trend was part of a natural process.

The hearing committee made special note of dozens of alterations that amounted to reversals or negations of conclusions. For example, after a discussion of climate data in the draft, Cooney proposed insertion of the following sentence: “The negative commentary asserted that certain assessment efforts were exaggerated, contrived, or otherwise unsubstantiated.”

The June 2003 Strategic Plan draft read: “Climate modeling capabilities have improved dramatically in recent years and can be expected to continue to do so. As a result, scientists are now able to model Earth system processes and the coupling of those processes on a regional and global scale with increasing precision and reliability.” CEQ had this passage eliminated.

Most of the alternations were subtler, but had the effect of casting excessive doubt on already cautious and conservatively worded scientific findings. For instance, in one passage, the draft read, “Warming temperatures will also affect Arctic land areas.” As in dozens of other passages, Cooney replaced the word “will” with the word “may” resulting in a statement of complete uncertainty. Similarly, in numerous places, Cooney added the word “potentially.”

During his deposition March 12, Cooney was questioned about the Strategic Plan as well as the climate section of a major EPA report that CEQ insisted be altered in similar fashion. The CEQ exerted so much pressure, insisting on hundreds of edits, that the EPA eventually cut the entire section out of the report.

Related PDF files from the Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearings are available through the committee’s web site. http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1214

Ah, the left's love affair with lawfare.

Or love affair with evidence as a prerequisite for arrest and conviction...

How many courtrooms do you plan on building to try the various "alleged" illegal combatants captured by US military forces? What's the projected budget for defense attorneys? How many prosecutors will we need for this as well as the rest of the legal infastructure for just a year's trials? Who will perform the psych compitency exams pre-trial? How many hours of training in rules of search and seizure will every US military member require yearly? What infastructure will need to be constructed to handle the evidence seized under combat conditions for forensic analysis and chain of custody storage? How many frontline military units do you plan to take out of rotation so they can testify in various legal proceedings?

Care to explain what any of the above has to do with any points I've made in this discussion?

Something like 70% of the prisoners we held at Abu Ghraib were found to have been mistakenly swept up and had committed no wrongdoing, and the source of this information was the US military, not some "left" news source.  Our Northern Alliance buddies in Afghanistan were taking our money and handing over to us thousands of "terrorists" whom it turned out were mostly farmers and members of other rival tribes who'd done nothing wrong.  How much money and resources did we needlessly spend on dealing with these prisoners that could have been avoided if we'd bothered with the most basic of fact-checking before we hauled them in?

Rog