Violence in Wisconsin

More civility from the left:

Senate Republicans were harried by swarming crowds. “We tried to get out of the building after the vote, because they were rushing the chamber, and we were escorted by security through a tunnel system to another building. But, after being tipped off by a Democrat, they mobbed the exit at that building, and were literally trying to break the windows of the cars we were in as we were driving away,” Republican senator Randy Hopper tells NRO. Such tactics, he sighs, were hardly unexpected. “I got a phone call yesterday saying that we should be executed. I’ve had messages saying that they want to beat me with a billy club.”

Half of Capitol Controlled by Protesters, “No One Is Safe.”

The new civility in Wisconsin: “No one is safe.” In fact, better to read the rest of the quote:

No one is safe. Protesters have broken down doors, broken windows, Democrats are helping them into the building and they’re building momentum. They’re robo-calling like crazy, trying to pack as many people into the capitol so the Assembly can’t vote today. Right now there’s no way the Assembly can vote…we can’t secure the Assembly and we can’t protect our legislators. [emphasis mine]

I don’t seem to remember the tea party protesters doing this kind of stuff when Obamacare was being voted on.

An update on Wisconsin

An update on Wisconsin: Legislature passes union bargaining restrictions, violent protests break out. This quote from Walker is interesting:

This afternoon, following a week and a half of line-by-line negotiation, [Democrat] Sen. Miller sent me a letter that offered three options: 1) keep collective bargaining as is with no changes, 2) take our counter-offer, which would keep collective bargaining as is with no changes, 3) or stop talking altogether.

With that letter, I realized that we’re dealing with someone who is stalling indefinitely, and doesn’t have a plan or an intention to return. His idea of compromise is “give me everything I want,” and the only negotiating he’s doing is through the media.

Enough is enough.

Maiden flight of the space shuttle Discovery

An evening pause:I had played this video as an evening pause back in November, when I thought the last mission of the space shuttle Discovery would be launched. Now that it has finally landed, completing its final mission, I think worthwhile to once again go back in time and watch a film of the shuttle’s maiden flight, launched August 30, 1984, narrated by the astronauts themselves. Note that the female astronaut on this flight is Judith Resnik, who died a little over a year and a half later in the Challenger accident.

O’Keefe says he has more videos of NPR

O’Keefe says he has more NPR videos to release.

“But stay tuned, and you’ll see,” he told Newsmax. “I want to see if NPR tells the truth about what is going on. I want to see how they tell the truth, and then we’re going to release more information. So we’ll see what happens.”

Then there is this tidbit from NPR’s ombudsman, answering questions online for the Washington Post:

Who blabs to total strangers in public about their personal biases? Who doesn’t vet a prospective donor before meeting. PBS got the same offer and turned it down. [emphasis mine]

Given time, we are going to find out if PBS is lying or not, as we found out with ACORN when they repeatedly claimed they did not cooperate with O’Keefe’s pimp and prostitute and then had to retract those claims when O’Keefe released additional videos showing ACORN employees behaving illegally.

More here on the PBS sting.

The journal Science joins the cover-up

It’s not the crime it’s the cover-up: According to Science, Michael Mann of the climategate scandal did not advocate the illegal deletion of emails that had been requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as reported earlier by the Daily Caller. All he did was forward an email by Phil Jones, also part of the climategate scandal, that requested that emails should be deleted. He is therefore innocent.

This is getting absurd. That a journal like Science would try to justify this idiotic argument puts a serious stain on almost everything they publish. Michael Mann was requested by Phil Jones to contact Eugene Wahl and ask him to delete emails illegally. Mann took the easiest approach, and simply forwarded Jones’s email. Without question he was complicit in this illegal act.

If the scientific community doesn’t wake up soon and honestly deal with this scandal, they are going to destroy a four hundred year track record of honesty. Worse, they are going to find it increasingly difficult to get funds from anyone for their research.

Mature galaxy cluster found in young universe

A mature galaxy cluster has been found by astronomers at a time when the universe is thought to be only a quarter of its present age.

This discovery could be very significant, since astronomers think mature galaxy clusters need time to form, and shouldn’t exist in the early universe. “If further observations find many more [of these clusters] then this may mean that our understanding of the early Universe needs to be revised.”

The icecaps of Greenland and Antarctica: are they melting?

NASA scientists have published a paper warning that there is growing evidence that the melting at the polar caps is accelerating. From the press release:

The pace at which the polar ice sheets are losing mass was found to be accelerating rapidly. Each year over the course of the study, the two ice sheets lost a combined average of 36.3 gigatonnes more than they did the year before. In comparison, the 2006 study of mountain glaciers and ice caps estimated their loss at 402 gigatonnes a year on average, with a year-over-year acceleration rate three times smaller than that of the ice sheets.

Several things to note after reading the actual paper:

Climate science hearing changes nothing

There was a hearing in Congress today on climate science, though it apparently changed nothing: the Republican leadership in the committee is going to proceed with legislation to try to roll back the EPA regulations relating to carbon dioxide imposed by the Obama administration.

The most interesting detail I gleaned from the above article however was this quote, written by the Science journalist himself, Eli Kintisch:

The hearing barely touched on the underlying issue, namely, is it appropriate for Congress to involve itself so deeply into the working of a regulatory agency? Are there precedents? And what are the legal and governance implications of curtailing an agency’s authority in this way?

What a strange thing to write. If I remember correctly, we are a democracy, and the people we elect to Congress are given the ultimate responsibility and authority to legislate. There are no “legal or governance implications.” If they want to rein in a regulatory agency, that is their absolute Constitutional right. That Kintisch and his editors at Science don’t seem to understand this basic fact about American governance is most astonishing.

Hoyer Says Federal Budget May Not Be Balanced for 20 Years

What a clown! Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) has suddenly discovered the federal government is broke.

“Now [that] we’re at $14 trillion in debt, I think the answer is – responsibly – we’re not going to get there [a balanced budget] in ten years, but we have to be on a very considered path to get there, certainly, within the next decade and a half or two decades,

Trouble is, Steny, that debt was mostly created when you were in charge in Congress.

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