A 1% increase (adjusted for inflation) in 2006 over 2005 -- and an increase of over 3% if one excludes disaster relief donations (there were no major disasters in 2006 -- but somehow Bush doesn't get credit for this like he got blamed for the 2005 hurricanes).

This increase shows two important things. First, the American people are a generous people who will rise to meet the needs of our country without crippling taxes. Second, it shows that the economy is fundamentally strong.

Giving historically tracks the health of the overall economy, with the rise amounting to about one-third the rise in the stock market, according to Giving USA. Last year was right on target, with a 3.2 percent rise as stocks rose more than 10 percent on an inflation-adjusted basis.

"What people find especially interesting about this, and it's true year after year, that such a high percentage comes from individual donors," Giving USA Chairman Richard Jolly said.

Individuals gave a combined 75.6 percent of the total. With bequests, that rises to 83.4 percent.

It isn't corporate giving that produces these results -- it is individual generosity.

Furthermore, this should be an indication of which Americans are most generous.

The biggest chunk of the donations, $96.82 billion or 32.8 percent, went to religious organizations. The second largest slice, $40.98 billion or 13.9 percent, went to education, including gifts to colleges, universities and libraries.

About 65 percent of households with incomes less than $100,000 give to charity, the report showed.

Religious donors and those of relatively modest means gave the biggest percentage of the money -- voters who tend towards the conservative side of the spectrum, not wealthy liberals.

Posted by: Greg at 12:45 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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One on climate issues itself, the other on the notion of "consensus".

First, the issue of whetehr we are really dealing with a period of sustained glogal warming at all.

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.

Imagine that -- it is the sun, not "greenhouse gasses" that we need to focus on in dealing with global climate issues.

And, of course, there are teh views of scientists.

In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.

Somehow I don't believe the opinions of climate scientists have shifted so completely in the past four years, though I would like to see additional studies on the matter. Could it be, though, that our "friends" who adhere to the religion of manmade global warming have been fudging the data?

Posted by: Greg at 01:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Maybe not, if the theory put forward in this prosecution prevails. The argument being made is that choosing gay victims to rob because they are perceived as easy targets is sufficient basis to convict of a hate crime -- even though the only "bias" shown is the belief that they won't fight back.

In her courtroom on the 21st floor of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn yesterday, Justice Jill Konviser-Levine sat and pondered the question of hate.

“Bottom line,” Justice Konviser-Levine ruminated aloud, “is animus an element of the crime?”

The crime in question was the killing of Michael J. Sandy, 29, a gay man who was lured to a parking area in Sheepshead Bay last October, beaten and chased into traffic. He later died in the hospital.

Prosecutors have said a group of young men contacted Mr. Sandy through an online gay chat room, selecting him as a robbery victim in the belief that a gay man would be unwilling or unable to put up a fight and unlikely to report the crime.

The defendants — John Fox, 20; Ilya Shurov, 21; and Anthony Fortunato, 21 — have been charged not just with murder, but with murder under the state Hate Crimes Act of 2000, which provides longer prison sentences for crimes motivated “in whole or in substantial part because of a belief or perception regarding the race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation of a person.”

Now let's be honest here -- these guys are creeps and deserve to be dealt with harshly. Indeed, I think the most appropriate punishment for them involves a needle in their veins -- or being drawn and quartered by city buses. However, to apply the law in this manner is to prove what many of us have always said about hate crime laws, namely that they constitute unequal treatment of the law by enhancing penalties for the same crime based upon membership in specially protected classes.

Posted by: Greg at 12:12 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Prayers go out to the families and colleagues of these brave firefighters -- and to the people of Charleston.

At least nine firefighters re dead in a blaze that swept through a Charleston, S.C., furniture warehouse officials tell ABC News.

"There is the presumption they were tragically and heroically lost," Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley said early Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. "This is a tragic matter."

* * *

Witnesses said the store's roof collapsed, throwing debris over about two-dozen rescue workers. Onlookers were hit with flying ash.

"It was like a 30-foot tornado of flames," said Mark Hilton, who was struck in his eye.

No words can amplify the horror -- or the heroism.

Posted by: Greg at 11:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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When you can't even come up with a consistent explanation of why you want the magnets removed from the firetrucks, it is clear that catering to the anti-war/pro-terror extremists is the reason for the decision.

Our brave troops will still be fighting in Afghanistan this September even if the magnetic ribbon support decals on Toronto Fire trucks and ambulances won't be.

The city has ordered the Support Our Troop decals to be removed from all fire trucks and EMS vehicles on Sept. 4, the Sun has learned.

The reason? It depends on who you talk to. And there are lots of contradictions.

Some say it is because it was not brought to council for proper approval, others say protocol was not followed. Another reason given is it was a one-year project.

But many City Hall sources tell me it has everything to do with some complaints from a few anti-war citizens who have the ear of some leftist councillors -- and felt the ribbons were in support of the war in Afghanistan and not just in support of the troops.

I'm sure that there were a few folks in Toronto who sympathized with the Nazis during WWII and opposed the war as a result. Would their objections have stopped municipal efforts to support the troops in 1943? Why should their objections today stop efforts to support the troops now?

Posted by: Greg at 11:53 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Well, maybe.

But only if you take the word of the man-made global warming advocating IPCC -- or at least their data.

The salient facts are these. First, the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2.

Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).

Third, there are strong indications from solar studies that Earth's current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades.

Of course, the scientific data and the political agenda of the man-made global warming advocates -- so they ignore the data while insisting that they are latter-day prophets. They are at least partially right -- they are latter-day false-prophets of doom, ignoring what their own evidence clearly shows.

Posted by: Greg at 09:13 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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What next -- subliminal ads?

It goes by so quickly -- sneeze and you'll miss it -- that it's almost not there at all. Just as one song on the radio fades away and another begins, a ghostly voice intones: "Iced coffee at McDonald's."

No elaboration, no product superiority claims, no "tastes great!" braggadocio. Just four words. And gone.

Way back when, radio commercials were 60 seconds long. Eventually, the :60 begat the 30-second ad, which begat the :15. More recently, some spots have shrunk to just five seconds. Now, "Iced coffee at McDonald's" is part of the vanguard of radio commercials that take this trend to its obvious next diminution: the two-second ad.

Two-second ads have been popping up anew -- briefly, of course -- on stations owned by Clear Channel Communications, the radio leviathan that developed the concept and began selling it to marketers last year. Listen closely, and quickly, and you'll hear the McDonald's adlet between spins of, say, "Spirit in the Sky" and "Another Brick in the Wall" on local oldies station WBIG-FM. Or you might hear the fast-food chain's jingle -- Bah-dah-bam-bam-BAH! -- between Billy Joel and Elton John tunes on WASH-FM, Clear Channel's soft-rock station.

The two-second spots may have an advantage, though -- longer commercials are just plain annoying, and listeners often change stations. these little blips are over before you know it -- if we start seeing more of these, perhaps it is because stations discover that it keeps the listeners tuned in.

But still, i sort of wonder if we are not reaching back into the age of subliminal seduction.

Posted by: Greg at 03:13 AM | Comments (56) | Add Comment
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First he quits.

Michael B. Nifong, the Durham County district attorney, announced Friday that he would resign, as he faces disciplinary charges for his handling of a sexual assault prosecution against three former Duke University lacrosse players who were later declared innocent.

Speaking in a barely audible voice in testimony before a disciplinary hearing panel, Mr. Nifong apologized to the players, their families and the North Carolina justice system.

His resignation came as a surprise on the fourth day of a hearing by the North Carolina State Bar, which has charged him with “systematic abuse of prosecutorial discretion” for withholding evidence and making improper pretrial statements.

“It has become increasingly apparent, during the course of this week, in some ways that it might not have been before, that my presence as the district attorney in Durham is not furthering the cause of justice,” Mr. Nifong said.

Joseph B. Cheshire, a lawyer for one of the three former players, said of Mr. Nifong’s promise to resign: “I believe it is a cynical political attempt to save his law license. His apology is far too late.”

Not only did Nifong not further the cause of Justice, he actually ripped off her blindfold, forced her onto her knees and sodomized her on the steps of the courthouse in Durham on a regular basis last year. Cheshire is correct -- this apology is far too late, as well as woefully inadequate.

And now Nifong waits for justice.

UPDATE: Nifong found guilty by bar panel. JUSTICE SERVED!

Mike Nifong broke several rules of professional conduct during his disastrous prosecution of three Duke University lacrosse players falsely accused of rape, committing "deceit and misrepresentations," a disciplinary committee ruled today.

The committee must now decide if the longtime prosecutor in Durham County, who has already pledged to resign his post as district attorney, should be stripped of his law license.

The North Carolina State Bar charged Nifong with breaking several rules of professional conduct, including lying to both the court and bar investigators and withholding critical DNA test results from the players' defense attorneys.

Let's see -- guilty of "dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation." But then again, we already knew that.

Here's hoping that the penalty s disbarment -- followed by a criminal prosecution for the violation of the civil rights of these three young men.

UPDATE II: NIFONG DISBARRED IN NORTH CAROLINA!

In a case that has brought one surprise after another, a disciplinary hearing panel found Michael B. Nifong, the Durham County district attorney, guilty today of ethical violations while pressing a false accusation of sexual assault against three former Duke University lacrosse players. The panel then ruled that Mr. Nifong should be disbarred.

But the ruling was almost an anticlimax to the case because in the penalty phase of the five-day ethics hearing, David Freedman, one of Mr. Nifong’s lawyers, told the panel that Mr. Nifong believed that disbarment was “the appropriate punishment in this case.” The state also said it felt disbarment was appropriate.

After deliberating for less than an hour, the panel stated that any punishment short of disbarment would not be appropriate in the case.

In a lengthy statement, F. Lane Williamson, chairman of the disciplinary committee, said that Mr. Nifong had received due process, “and that’s what was nearly hijacked in the case of the Duke lacrosse defendants.”

Six of the charges against Mr. Nifong involved “dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation,” the most serious of the accusations against Mr. Nifong.

SOme questions remain:

1) When will the criminal charges for civil rights violations be brought against Nifong?

2) When will Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the other professional racists who presumed guilt on the part of the falsely accused young men offer their apologies?

3) What sanction will Duke administrators and professors whose words and deeds explicitly and implicitly damned the falsely accused young men face? This especially applies to the Duke 88, who have expressed no remorse for their condemnation of the innocent students (and their teammates) before any evidence was in the public domain?

4) When will the false accuser face some sort of justice?

Justice was done today in Durham -- but there is still a long way to go.

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Posted by: Greg at 07:05 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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These numbers are shocking.

During its 2005-2006 fiscal year, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America performed a record 264,943 abortions, attained a record profit of $55.8 million and received record taxpayer funding of $305.3 million.

According to its annual report, income is divided roughly into three major categories: clinic income (fees charged to customers at clinics); donations (gifts from corporations, foundations and individuals); and taxpayer money (grants and contracts from federal, state and local government).

For the year July 1, 2005, through June 30, 2006, Planned Parenthood received $345.1 million in clinic income, $305.3 million in taxpayer funding and $212.2 million in donations. Total income reached $902.8 million while total expenses came to $847.0 million, leaving a profit of $55.8 million.

Over 1/3 of the organization's budget is coming from the pockets of the American taxpayer. This organization, which performs some 20% of all American abortions annually is pocketing over $300 MILLION in government funds each year.

Are you shocked, offended, and disgusted? So am I. Now let's go out and do something about it. And it starts with letting our fellow Americans know the degree to which their tax dollars are subsidizing abortion.

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Posted by: Greg at 02:00 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Why the grave miscarriage of justice against the three innocent Duke lacrosse players? Because Mike Nifong had an election to win.

The district attorney in charge of the Duke University lacrosse rape case told the North Carolina State Bar he failed to turn over evidence favoring the defense because he was busy campaigning for office, a disciplinary panel was told Thursday.

Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong told bar investigators that as he faced "an unprecedented number of challengers" in his first election campaign, "I was not always able to give the case my full attention."

Nifong cited his campaign in a letter to the bar as one of several reasons that "may possibly have contributed to my inadvertent failure to provide the evidence in question." Portions of the letter were read aloud at the third day of a trial in Raleigh that will determine if Nifong will lose his license to practice law.

Unfit.

Unprofessional.

Unethical.

Mike Nifong needs to be disbarred, and then tried for civil rights violations against these three young men.

Posted by: Greg at 01:52 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Well, it could be, if they can jump through the hoops.

Little-known, privately held Hyperion Resources Inc. said on Wednesday it plans to build an $8 billion oil refinery, the first in the United States since 1976, at one of several sites under consideration in the U.S. Midwest.

Dallas-based Hyperion plans a 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery as part of “the most environmentally sound energy center in the United States” that will include a power plant fueled by petroleum coke, a refining byproduct.

The plant will refine crude from the Canadian oil sands in Alberta to feed the U.S. market, the company said.

Hyperion officials were in Elk Point, South Dakota, on Wednesday to announce they were considering the small town on the Missouri River as a possible site for the energy center.

Hyperion is in a race to build the first U.S. refinery in 30 years with Arizona Clean Fuels Yuma, which has been struggling for years to obtain funding for its nearly $3 billion refinery plan that has so far secured about $35 million.

So, we may have two coming on line in the next few years.

Any chance of Big Oil stepping up to the plate?

Posted by: Greg at 12:18 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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To be honest, there is less to this story than meets the eye, though you cannot tell that from the headline and introduction.

An internal FBI audit has found that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules more than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions in recent years, far more than was documented in a Justice Department report in March that ignited bipartisan congressional criticism.

The new audit covers just 10 percent of the bureau's national security investigations since 2002, and so the mistakes in the FBI's domestic surveillance efforts probably number several thousand, bureau officials said in interviews. The earlier report found 22 violations in a much smaller sampling.

Sounds bad -- until you read the next paragraph.

The vast majority of the new violations were instances in which telephone companies and Internet providers gave agents phone and e-mail records the agents did not request and were not authorized to collect. The agents retained the information anyway in their files, which mostly concerned suspected terrorist or espionage activities.

So the reality here is not that the FBI acted inappropriately, but that they received more information than they initially requested. Actual instances of inappropriate requests were a mere handful -- about two dozen.

Now why would the FBI keep the additional information received and how was it justified? Well, the Post explains that here.

Of the more than 1,000 violations uncovered by the new audit, about 700 involved telephone companies and other communications firms providing information that exceeded what the FBI's national security letters had sought. But rather than destroying the unsolicited data, agents in some instances issued new National Security Letters to ensure that they could keep the mistakenly provided information. Officials cited as an example the retention of an extra month's phone records, beyond the period specified by the agents.

Case agents are now told that they must identify mistakenly produced information and isolate it from investigative files. "Human errors will inevitably occur with third parties, but we now have a clear plan with clear lines of responsibility to ensure errant information that is mistakenly produced will be caught as it is produced and before it is added to any FBI database," Caproni said.

So what we have here is a situation in which the procedures were unclear and so agents acted to bring the information within the scope of the law after it had been erroneously given by someone else. Really, can you blame them? Would you want to be the FBI agent called to testify before Congress following a terrorist attack and have to explain why you destroyed a key piece of evidence that could have nipped the plot in the bud? I know I wouldn't -- and no amount of good faith in having done so would ever allow one to be absolved of doing so in the eyes of the American public. As it is, I expect that some of those records that have been isolated under current procedures could be the source of much contention if they ever prove to hold a "smoking gun" in a future terrorism case.

Oh, and the actual rate of violations?

FBI officials said the audit found no evidence to date that any agent knowingly or willingly violated the laws or that supervisors encouraged such violations. The Justice Department's report estimated that agents made errors about 4 percent of the time and that third parties made mistakes about 3 percent of the time, they said. The FBI's audit, they noted, found a slightly higher error rate for agents -- about 5 percent -- and a substantially higher rate of third-party errors -- about 10 percent.

Higher than we would like, but not an unreasonable rate given that we are dealing with a period that included the earliest anti-terrorism investigations with the new tools given investigators in the wake of 9/11. I wish we had a breakdown of these errors over time, to see if the rate has decreased from the earliest days.

Posted by: Greg at 12:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Here's an interesting discussion of a fun cultural issue -- do diamond engagement rings really serve a legitimate purpose in our day and age?

But there's a powerful case to be made that in an age of equitable marriage the engagement ring is an outmoded commodity—starting with the obvious fact that only the woman gets one. The diamond ring is the site of retrograde fantasies about gender roles. What makes it pernicious—as opposed to tackily fun—is its cost (these days you don't need just a diamond; you need a good diamond), its dubious origins, and the cynical blandishments of TV and print ads designed to suggest a ring's allure through the crassest of stereotypes. Case in point: An American couple stands in a plaza in Europe. The man shouts, "I love this woman!" The woman appears mortified. He then pulls out a diamond ring and offers it to her. She says, in heartfelt tones, "I love this man." And you've probably noticed that these days diamonds really are forever: Men are informed that their beautiful wife needs a "Twenty-Fifth Anniversary" ring (note this ad's reduction of a life to copulation and child-rearing), and single women are told not to wait around for guys but to go ahead and get themselves a "right-finger ring." Live to be 100 and a woman of a certain class might find her entire hand crusted over with diamonds. A diamond company, you see, is unrelenting. In their parlance, "the desire is there; we just want to breathe more life into it."

But the desire wasn't always there. In fact, the "tradition" of the diamond engagement ring is newer than you might think. Betrothal rings, a custom inherited from the Romans, became an increasingly common part of the Christian tradition in the 13th century. The first known diamond engagement ring was commissioned for Mary of Burgundy by the Archduke Maximilian of Austria in 1477. The Victorians exchanged "regards" rings set with birthstones. But it wasn't until the late 19th century, after the discovery of mines in South Africa drove the price of diamonds down, that Americans regularly began to give (or receive) diamond engagement rings. (Before that, some betrothed women got thimbles instead of rings.) Even then, the real blingfest didn't get going until the 1930s, when—dim the lights, strike up the violins, and cue entrance—the De Beers diamond company decided it was time to take action against the American public.

I got off easy on this one.

My darling wife and I, early in our dating, had seen an amethyst ring while out shopping, and she mentioned how she loved amethyst more than any other stone because purple is her favorite color. The ring itself had beautiful stained-glass window cut-outs on the side that were backed with more amethyst -- and since we were both seminary students that had a special meaning to us both. Lastly, the amethyst is my birthstone, which added to the significance.

When, some months later, we began talking about marriage, there was never any doubt in my mind about what ring I would get her -- and the fact that she mentioned the ring in another context around the same time served as confirmation that my decision was the right one. It came as something of a surprise to her when I slipped it on her finger -- and she assured me that no other ring would have moved her more. To this day, her friends still say that they envy her for having an engagement ring that MEANS something rather than simply fulfills the social expectation of a diamond solitaire.

But Meghan O'Rourke does raise a really interesting question as well -- in a day and age when women usually work and we are confronted with insistence upon gender equality and equity, does I make sense for a man to go into hock to buy several thousand dollars worth of diamond while the woman in return gives him . . . nothing? Are we really dealing with a relic of a sexist, patriarchal view of the world that needs to be abolished? Come on, feminists -- speak up!

Posted by: Greg at 02:21 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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1 This feminist says yes, perhaps, but it's also about the way we (Americans? humans?) allow corporations to control our desires.

I doubt many women would look deep inside and decide that owning a sparkly little rock is more important to them than the lives/limbs of African children (or even just being debt-free). You hit the nail on the head as far as where that pressure comes from -- DeBeers. Advertising. Being told constantly that if she is a worthwhile woman, she must be given diamonds (post hoc ergo propter hoc, if she doesn't have diamonds, she's not worthwhile.) And you men have your own advertising mine-field to navigate, mostly full of cars as far as I can tell.

I wish we would all take time to evaluate our desires before indulging them... we have come to resemble a nation of infants, in many respects. Would truly mature people put themselves deeply into debt for something useless but shiny?

Posted by: Elizabeth at Tue Jun 12 11:06:31 2007 (TsRMu)

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Every study proves it. And the quicker it is implemented, the more lives it saves.

Among the conclusions:

• Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14).

• The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston.

• Speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect. For every 2.75 years cut from time spent on death row, one murder would be prevented, according to a 2004 study by an Emory University professor.

And for all the folks criticizing the studies, there has not been a single study to show that they are wrong. People just don't like the outcome.

And this also overlooks the other important issue -- no one who is executed ever commits another murder, while those sentenced to life without parole or a lesser sentence have the capacity to (and, indeed, have) kill fellow inmates and/or guards at the facility where they are incarcerated. After all, how much deterrent effect is there in sentencing an individual serving a life sentence to another life sentence?

Now this is not to say that we should rush to execute anybody, or that we should lower procedural safeguards. However, it does indicate that eliminating the death penalty results in a greater death toll.

Posted by: Greg at 01:20 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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Have we descended so far into the depths of pro-abortion political correctness that using the word "baby" is now forbidden?

A full-term fetus was found in a southwest Houston apartment Sunday after the mother went to the hospital, police said. Nurses at Ben Taub General Hospital became suspicious when the woman arrived there about 8 a.m., police said.

"It looked as if she had just given birth," said John Cannon, an HPD spokesman.

Hospital workers called police when the woman denied having a baby. Officers found the fetus inside the apartment in the 5100 block of South Willow.

Although the fetus appeared fully developed, HPD investigators couldn't say whether it was the result of a miscarriage or had been born.

"We'll have to wait on the medical examiners to rule on what happened, exactly, to the baby," said Sgt. Bobby Roberts, with HPD's homicide division.

The mother, about 23, was still at the hospital later Sunday, where detectives expected to question her again. They also want to speak with the father.

If we are talking about a "full-term fetus", then miscarriage is not an option. What we have is either a live-birth or a still-birth of a BABY! Why can't the Houston Chronicle have the decency to acknowledge as much?

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Yeah, that's right -- what goes up does, indeed, come down -- including the price of filling your tank and taking a drive.

Gas prices are down for the first time since January, according to a national survey released Sunday.

The average price of a gallon of self-serve regular gasoline has dropped more than 7 cents in the past three weeks, to $3.11, the survey found.

Drivers in Jackson, Mississippi, are getting the best deal at $2.87 per gallon. Chicago drivers are paying the most -- $3.61.

The Lundberg Survey of about 5,000 gas stations was carried out June 8 and May 18.

When the average price of gasoline hit $3.18 in May, it was the highest price ever recorded, even when adjusted for inflation, according to a previous Lundberg survey.

The 7.37-cent drop comes nowhere near offsetting the $1.00 rise in the price of gas that occurred between January 19 and May 18, said survey publisher Trilby Lundberg.

"It's unlikely we can see the other 93 cents any time soon," she told CNN in a telephone interview.

Most of that 7-cents-relief came from lower prices charged for gas produced in refineries outside the United States, she said.

"Some of our domestic refining capacity is still just limping along, after at least four months of extraordinary down time," she said, citing seasonal maintenance and more than 30 other events "that were beyond ordinary seasonal tune-ups," including fires and explosions.

The nation's refineries are operating at 89.6 percent capacity, down about 6 points from normal, she said.

And I agree that we are unlikely to see the other 93 cents in the near term, but i wouldn't be surprised to see the prices drop some more -- around here I'm paying $2.89 -- I wouldn't be surprised to see $2.50 to $2.75 before the summer has ended.

Posted by: Greg at 05:09 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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A much more worthy story about heroic people -- people who really deserve the respect of America's young people -- doing something for which they must be admired.

A patched-up Atlantis blasted off with seven astronauts Friday on the first space shuttle flight of 2007, putting NASA back on track after a run of bad luck and scandal that included a damaging hailstorm and a lurid love triangle.

Its big orange fuel tank covered with white blotches where the foam insulation had been repaired, the spaceship rose from its seaside launch pad with a roar and climbed into a clear and still-brightly lit sky at 7:38 p.m. EDT, setting a course for the international space station.

The countdown was nearly flawless, and the shuttle smoothly settled into orbit around the Earth.

During the 11-day flight, Atlantis' astronauts will deliver a new segment and a pair of solar panels to the orbiting outpost. They will also swap out a member of the space station's crew.

It was picture perfect -- though my wife and I always hold our breaths until we hear those haunting words -- "Go with throttle up" -- that we remember with great sadness from the doomed Challenger launch. No doubt we will do something similar 11 days from now.

Godspeed, crew of Shuttle Atlantis!

And best wishes to the crew from church who are working on this mission five miles down the road at JSC even as I type, and to everyone else associated with the space program and this mission (yes, including you, John C.). Your contributions to pushing back the "final frontier" are noted and appreciated deeply by this space geek.

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I despise the Fred Phelps Klan from Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas. They are hate-filled pseudo-Christians whose anti-Americanism is as deep as that of the Islamists and many left-wing anti-Bush activists.

But this story troubles me, becasue of the clear violation of Constitutional rights it involves.

A woman was arrested in Bellevue on Tuesday during the funeral for a fallen soldier.

Shirley Phelps-Roper was arrested on suspicion of contributing to the delinquency of a minor for allowing her 8-year-old son to stomp on an American flag.

Phelps-Roper is a member of a Topeka, Kan., church that conducts anti-homosexual picketing at funeral services for U.S. soldiers.

Now let's get this one straight here -- mama was arrested because she set up her kid to desecrate the flag. The arresting officer even confirms this.

Bellevue Officer Joe Gray, who made the arrest, said that at first the group brought out a couple of members' own American flags.

"The arrestee, Ms. Phelps-Roper, put one around her waist. The second one was given to a 10-year-old, who put it on the ground and started kicking it in the area they were protesting," Gray said.

Nebraska law states that it is a Class 3 misdemeanor when a person "intentionally casts contempt or ridicule upon a flag by mutilating, defacing, defiling, burning or trampling upon such flag." The law was passed in 1977.

"It appears the adults weren't stepping on the flag because they knew it was a violation of the law. But they allowed the children to go ahead and do that," Gray said.

The local prosecutor seems to agree.

Sarpy County Attorney Lee Polikov said the words from the group are fighting words and that takes it away from protected speech.

Which proves that Sarpy County Attorney Lee Polikov is an incompetent who should immediately be removed from office.

After all, this issue was settled nearly 20 years ago.

n Texas v. Johnson (1989) the Court addressed the flag-burning issue head-on and held (5-4) that Texas’ “venerated objects” law had been unconstitutionally applied to Gregory Lee Johnson when he burned a flag in Dallas. In considering the two interests advanced by Texas as overriding Johnson’s First Amendment rights, the majority first held that, under previously established standards, “the state’s interest in maintaining order is not implicated” since “no disturbance to the peace actually occurred or threatened to occur because of Johnson’s burning of the flag.” Turning to Texas’ second asserted interest, “preserving the flag as a symbol of nationhood and national unity,” the majority held that since Johnson’s guilt depended “on the likely communicative aspect of his expressive conduct,” the Texas statute violated the “bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, … that the Government may not prohibit expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” Citing its holding in Street that “a State may not criminally punish a person for uttering words critical of the flag,” the majority, represented by Justice William Brennan, declared flatly that Texas’ attempt to distinguish between the “written or the spoken words [at issue in Street] and nonverbal conduct … is of no moment where the nonverbal conduct is expressive, as is here, and where the regulation of that conduct is related to expression, as it is here.”

Furthermore, Brennan declared that the principle that “the Government may not prohibit expression simply because it disagrees with its message, is not dependent on the particular mode in which one chooses to express an idea” and therefore the state could not “criminally punish a person for burning a flag as a means of political protest” on the grounds that other means of expressing the same idea were available. The majority concluded that the “principles of freedom and inclusiveness that the flag best reflects” would be reaffirmed by its decision: “We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that his cherished emblem represents.”

Now I feel rather confident that word of this decision reached Kansas some time back -- whether by means of semaphore, pony express, or that new-fangled telegraph thingy (not to mention telephone, television, and the internet). And since the state has no interest in punishing desecration of the flag (stepping on a flag is clearly analogous to and less severe than burning one), the Kansas statute in question is as unenforcible as one mandating segregation of public schools. First Amendment trumps state law -- period. And to argue that constitutionally protected political/religious speech (remember, these folks are their own little family-based pseudo-church cult group) constitutes "fighting words" is absurd -- especially since the Fred Phelps Klan had a valid permit to demonstrate. What Polikov wants to impose is nothing less than a heckler's veto -- something the Supreme Court has more or less consistently ruled against in the case of such speech since it decided the case of Terminello v. Chicago, in which SCOTUS held that there “must be a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance or unrest” for otherwise constitutionally protected speech to be banned. That burden clearly has not been met here, and I would argue that the holding in Texas v. Johnson makes it unlikely that any court could ever legitimately hold that the burden has been met in a flag desecration case (provided the flag belongs to those doing the desecration).

So what we have here is a cop and a prosecutor attempting to establish an entirely new paradigm with some frightening ramifications. Under this novel arrangement engaging in constitutionally protected speech or allowing your child to do so is now contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Just imagine -- CPS showing up at the door to haul away children whose parents have taken them to protest abortion. Encouraging your child to express the wrong religious beliefs could constitute grounds for arrest. In other words, the police and prosecutor in Sarpy County are seeking to eviscerate the First Amendment.

As I have said in the past, and in this post, I despise the Fred Phelps Klan, and wish they would slink back under their rock -- but destroying the Constitution is not a method I find acceptable to make them do so.

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This is beyond belief -- after a judge says she will serve her time in jail, the LA Sheriff let's Paris Hilton go home because of crying jags and a rash!

Paris Hilton was released from a Los Angeles County jail early Thursday because of an unspecified medical problem and will fulfill the reminder of her sentence in home confinement, a sheriff's spokesman said.

The 26-year-old hotel heiress was sent home shortly after 2 a.m. fitted with an electronic monitoring bracelet. She had spent five days at the Century Regional Detention Facility in suburban Los Angeles for violating probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case.

"I can't specifically talk about the medical situation other than to say that, yes, it played a part in this," said sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore.

Hilton had been sentenced to 45 days behind bars, but had been expected to serve 23 days because of state rules allowing shorter sentences for good behavior.

Whitmore said that under the new agreement, Hilton would be confined to her home for 40 days.

"Because she has agreed to this through her attorney, her sentence is now back up to the 45 days. She has served already five days so that's 40 days," he explained.

So instead of jail, she gets to live it up in the lap of luxury. Some punishment!

Maybe if I get arrested, I'll just start sniveling and whining about the low thread count of the sheets. Assuming that doesn't get me anally raped and nicknamed by my cellmate, perhaps they will send me home early.

I'm hoping that the judge in this case calls all parties involved in this travesty into court and sends them away for a little R-&-R in the LA jail for contempt of court.

Posted by: Greg at 05:58 AM | Comments (269) | Add Comment
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That is the only word that fits this situation.

No one was believed to have survived the crash of a small plane that was carrying a six-member organ transplant team and their cargo of donor organs, authorities said Tuesday.

Searchers found human remains during a search in Lake Michigan, about six miles northeast of Milwaukee, a Coast Guard official said Tuesday.

The team's lifesaving mission _ carrying unspecified organs from Milwaukee for transplant to a patient in Michigan _ was cut short Monday when the Cessna Citation went down in 57-degree water shortly after the pilot signaled an emergency.

Those on board were two surgeons and two donor specialists from the University of Michigan Health System and two pilots who regularly fly their transplant missions.

The loss of the transplant organs is awful, but the loss of the team involved in getting them where they are needed is even worse. Prayers must go out for those killed, and their families, the organ donor(s) and loved ones, and the intended recipient(s). So many touched by one incident. -- and so many folks involved in heroic service snuffed out in an instant.

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Soros owns Halliburton!

To the tune of 3.5% of his firm's portfolio -- the fourth largest stock holding.

I'm curious about how the liberal groups he bankrolls feel about taking money tainted by that association, especially since the purchases were made in the last quarter of 2006 -- well after the time that the Soros-funded groups had defined the company to be the source of all evil in the world.

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I've been arguing with one of my commenters about man's impact on climate change for a while now. He argues that 99.9% of all scientists support the theory of man-made global warming -- and further claims that "hundreds of thousands" of scientists support it while only 10 do not. I've asked him to prove that latter claim, but he either cannot or will not.

I'd argue that it must be cannot, based upon this information. heck, it appears that the IPCC cannot or will not even list those who endorse its positions.

What of the one claim that we hear over and over again, that 2,000 or 2,500 of the world's top scientists endorse the IPCC position? I asked the IPCC for their names, to gauge their views. "The 2,500 or so scientists you are referring to are reviewers from countries all over the world," the IPCC Secretariat responded. "The list with their names and contacts will be attached to future IPCC publications, which will hopefully be on-line in the second half of 2007."

An IPCC reviewer does not assess the IPCC's comprehensive findings. He might only review one small part of one study that later becomes one small input to the published IPCC report. Far from endorsing the IPCC reports, some reviewers, offended at what they considered a sham review process, have demanded that the IPCC remove their names from the list of reviewers. One even threatened legal action when the IPCC refused.

A great many scientists, without doubt, are four-square in their support of the IPCC. A great many others are not. A petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine between 1999 and 2001 claimed some 17,800 scientists in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. A more recent indicator comes from the U.S.-based National Registry of Environmental Professionals, an accrediting organization whose 12,000 environmental practitioners have standing with U.S. government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. In a November, 2006, survey of its members, it found that only 59% think human activities are largely responsible for the warming that has occurred, and only 39% make their priority the curbing of carbon emissions. And 71% believe the increase in hurricanes is likely natural, not easily attributed to human activities.

Sure seems like we are talking about something less than 99.9% of scientists, and not even what can be reasonably described as a consensus. I guess what I've been getting is junk statistics to go along with the junk science of the supporters of the theory of man-made global warming.

My commenter argues that those who dissent from his beliefs are "outliers" it seems clear to me that those who make such hip, faddish (dare I say cult-like) claims about the metaphysical certainty of and scientific consensus on man's impact on global warming might best be referred to as "In"-liars.

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Tragedy seems to have brought together two individuals who have suffered deeply.

n a match made in tabloid heaven, the father of murdered child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey and the mother of missing-in-Aruba teen Natalee Holloway are dating, FOX News has confirmed.

John Ramsey, 63, and Beth Holloway Twitty, 46, have been romantically involved since January 2007, though the two met at a fundraiser last summer.

The couple has been spotted openly holding hands and kissing in Mountain Brook, Ala. — where Twitty lives — and at an art show at a nearby art museum. They've also been seen at various restaurants.

Ramsey's wife and JonBenet's mother, Patsy Ramsey, died last June of ovarian cancer at the age of 49. Twitty was officially divorced from George "Jug" Twitty in December.

Both single parents share the tragedy of children who are victims of unsolved crimes.

At first blush, there is something that strikes me as unseemly about the relationship -- but in truth, there really isn't. Indeed, one can only hope tat these two people, united by the pain of losing daughters in horrific ways, might find some comfort in their companionship and love.

And may the news media and tabloids have the decency to leave them in peace.

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Couldn't happen to a more deserving jackass.

Columnist and author Eric Alterman has been released after being arrested Sunday night inside the debate spin room. He was charged with criminal trespass after police say he refused repeated orders to leave.

Goffstown, N.H. police said Alterman was in the spin room as a guest of the Creative Coalition and went to an area reserved for a private reception for WMUR-TV. Police said he was asked by an executive at the party if he was invited to the private area and was asked to leave. A police officer was called after a verbal altercation ensued. According to police, Alterman was asked seven times to leave and became increasingly loud as he refused. After ignoring a final request, police said he was handcuffed and taken from the building.

Alterman spoke with CNN after being released. He called the arrest a “misunderstanding” and claimed he did not refuse orders to leave.

Alterman justifies his unruly behavior by claiming to have been treated brusquely and that his exalted position as a journalist didn't impress the cops enough to make them back down from evicting him from a place he had no right to be.

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Payback's a bitch, isn't it.

From his second-floor apartment at the counterculture crossing of Haight and Ashbury streets, Arthur Evans watches a new generation of wayward youth invade his free-spirited neighborhood.

The former flower child was among the legions of idealistic wanderers who migrated here during the Vietnam War to "tune in, turn on and drop out."

But Evans, who has lived at the same address for 34 years, says he has never seen anything like this crowd, who use his flower bed as a bathroom and sell pot outside his window.

They're known as gutter punks, these homeless kids with dirty dreadlocks and nose rings, lime-green mohawks and orange spray-painted faces, who panhandle with cardboard signs that riff on their lifestyles. "Please Help Us Get Un-Sober," one reads. Another: "Please Give Us Weed, Beer or Money."

Sometimes aggressive, they block sidewalks as they strum guitars or bang on bongos. Gangs of them skateboard down the middle of Haight Street. Some throw used hypodermic needles into a nearby pond they call Hep-C Lake.

Evans, 64, says they should get help, clean up or go home.

"I used to be a hippie. I wore beads and grew my hair long," he said. "But my generation had something these kids do not: a standard of civilized behavior."

Panhandler Jonah Lawrence, 25, insists it is residents who need civilizing. "They say, 'Get a job!' " he said. "And I say, 'You got clothes for me? Or a place I can take a shower so I can look for work?' It's so bogus to tell me to get a job if I have nothing."

I'd think that an aging liberal hippie would want to help such folks out by giving them clothes and opening his home to them to shower. Instead he wants them to move on.

After all, long-haired, dope smoking, dirty, smelly ne'er-do-wells are part of the hippie tradition.

H/T Malkin

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1 I just come back from a trip to LA, We stayed in Santa Monica. I was amazed at the bums that had set up camp all along a beautifuly garden pathed park paralleling and overviewing the beach. Dirty clumps of debris and mankind were actually encouraged to stay there. Strange that they actually took possession of some of the most valuable acreage in the country. Santa Monicans actually take pride in the way they care for their bums. Meanwhile, just down the road, in Malibu the beaches are walled off and inaccessable. Clearly no tolorance for the bums or even common folk there. Its a strange world we live in.

Posted by: Liberty at Sun Jun 3 02:06:54 2007 (IFhkr)

2 Funny that he happens to be a wealthy real estate developer, who stands to get wealthier if he can jack property values up higher. Doesn't sound like a liberal to me.

Posted by: Dan at Sun Jun 3 07:13:04 2007 (IU21y)

3 Hey, RWR - looks like you called this one right, and I was wrong. The only campaign donation I can find from this guy was to Patrick Kennedy, and most of his business deals are profitable, but focused on urban development. I think you're right to call him an aging liberal.

Posted by: Dan at Sun Jun 3 08:05:25 2007 (IU21y)

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This makes me feel real comfortable with our border security.

The man with a dangerous form of tuberculosis who flew to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon was identified yesterday as a 31-year-old Atlanta lawyer. Department of Homeland Security officials said he re-entered the country from Canada when a customs agent let him pass despite knowing that the man was being sought by health authorities.

Congressional investigators, who will be holding hearings on the way the case of the man, Andrew Speaker, has been handled, say that the border agent at the Plattsburgh, N.Y., border crossing with Canada decided that Mr. Speaker did not look sick and so let him go.

Russ Knocke, press secretary for the Homeland Security Department, would not confirm the agentÂ’s rationale for releasing the man, saying only that the case was under investigation by its internal affairs and inspector generalÂ’s offices.

Who else is being admitted to the country by low-level employees who decide that the watch-listees don't seem dangerous? It is enough to make one question our entire border security system -- oh, that's right, we don't have one anymore.

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Many miles away
Something crawls to the surface
Of a dark Scottish loch.

The Loch Ness monster is back — and there's video. A man has captured what Nessie watchers say is possible footage of the supposed mythical creature beneath Scotland's most mysterious lake.

"I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this jet black thing, about 45 feet long, moving fairly fast in the water," said Gordon Holmes, the 55-year-old a lab technician from Shipley, Yorkshire, who took the video Saturday.

Nessie watcher and marine biologist Adrian Shine viewed the video and hoped to properly analyze it in the coming months.

"I see myself as a skeptical interpreter of what happens in the loch, but I do keep an open mind about these things and there is no doubt this is some of the best footage I have seen," said Shine, of the Loch Ness 2000 center in Drumnadrochit, on the shores of the lake.

Holmes said whatever it was moved at about 6 mph and kept a fairly straight course.

"My initial thought is it could be a very big eel, they have serpent-like features and they may explain all the sightings in Loch Ness over the years."

How long will it take to debunk this one?

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What did the Senate say about the Kyoto Treaty?

Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that--

(1) the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997, or thereafter, which would--

(A) mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex I Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period, or

(B) would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States; and

(2) any such protocol or other agreement which would require the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification should be accompanied by a detailed explanation of any legislation or regulatory actions that may be required to implement the protocol or other agreement and should also be accompanied by an analysis of the detailed financial costs and other impacts on the economy of the United States which would be incurred by the implementation of the protocol or other agreement.

This was adopted unanimously by the US Senate -- 95-0. Ands as I look at the text, I find 65 co-sponsors -- including Harry Reid and Dick Durbin, among other liberal Democrats.

H/t Captain's Quarters

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