NIGHT CHICKEN

I sense a "teaching moment" at my alma mater

Here it comes  ...  Liberalism is great until you run out of other people's money.

Associated Press

November 20, 2009

UC Berkeley students protest student fee hike

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - University of California Berkeley students protesting a 32 percent increase in student fees barricaded themselves Friday inside part of a campus building.

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The occupiers were demanding the university rehire laid-off custodial workers and give amnesty to anyone arrested in the protest.

About 30 to 50 protesters staged a takeover of Campbell Hall at UCLA on Thursday, as regents met across campus to approve the fee hike. More than 50 students were arrested during protests at UC Davis.

Regents say they had to raise fees because the cash-strapped state government can't meet the university's funding needs.

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Homeowner holds burglar at gunpoint for police

FOX 59 WXIN

November 17, 2009

Homeowner Holds Burglar Hostage

An accused robber is behind bars after a Central Indiana homeowner fights back.

22 year-old Jorge Barrera now faces burglary charges.

According to police, Barrera entered the home on the southwest side of Indianapolis late last night armed with a screw driver.

When Barrera began looking around the house with a flashlight the homeowner grabbed his gun and fired a shot, striking a glass door.

When polcie arrived, they found the homeowner holding Barrerra at gunpoint.

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Does anyone believe that the Fort Hood massacre was not a terrrorist act?

The Obama administration has dodged a bullet with no hard questioning over the relationship between his preferred path in dealing with the war on terror and what is essentially the first radical Islamist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.  Would people feel more comfortable calling it a terrorist attack if Major Hasan had carried out such carnage at a U.S. military base after deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan?

ABC News

November 19, 2009

Major Hasan's E-Mail: 'I Can't Wait to Join You' in Afterlife

United States Army Major Nidal Hasan told a radical cleric considered by authorities to be an al-Qaeda recruiter, "I can't wait to join you" in the afterlife, according to an American official with top secret access to 18 e-mails exchanged between Hasan and the cleric, Anwar al Awlaki over a six month period between Dec. 2008 and June 2009.

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Other messages include questions, the official with access to the e-mails said, that include when is jihadappropriate, and whether it is permissible if there are innocents killed in a suicide attack.

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A blog entry posted on Awlaki's site after the Fort Hood massacre praised Hasan as a "hero" and a "man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people." The site has since been taken down, as has a Facebook fan page devoted to Awlaki. In a subsequent interview with the Washington Post, Awlaki described himself as Hasan's "confidant."

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Union considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing boy scout to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at a park

Organized crime never had it so good. 

The Morning Call

November 15, 2009

Union troubled by Eagle Scout project in Allentown

In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.

Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city's largest municipal union.

Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.

"We'll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails," Balzano told the council.

Balzano said Saturday he isn't targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city's decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said "there's to be no volunteers." No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path.

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‘Climate change pushes poor women to prostitution, dangerous work’

Reason No. 3,264 to restructure and regulate our energy production, distribution and consumption. 

GMA News.TV

November 19, 2009

Effects of climate change have driven women in communities in coastal areas in poor countries like the Philippines to risk dangerous jobs, and sometimes even into the flesh trade.

Suneeta Mukherjee, country representative of the United Nations Food Population Fund (UNFPA), said women in the Philippines are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the country.

“Climate change could reduce income from farming and fishing possibly driving some women into sex work and thereby increase HIV infection," Mukherjee said during the Wednesday launch of the UNFPA annual State of World Population Report in Pasay City.

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Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out

It would have been nice to have heard some comments from scientists who are skeptics.  I wonder if they are baffled.

Spiegel Online - International

November 19, 2009

Global warming appears to have stalled.  Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years.  Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others expain it through ocean currents.

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The planet's temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. "At present, however, the warming is taking a break," confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany's best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. "There can be no argument about that," he says. "We have to face that fact."

Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models, and it is also a political issue.

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“You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

The Hill

November 18, 2009

Jesse Jackson: 'You can't vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man'

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill.

“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

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Is The U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?

When you consider the location and situation of these stations, it's makes you wonder why this wasn't picked up on earlier and why it doesn't appear to be a newsworthy story for the media to run with.

Download the report below.

 

Anthony Watts

How do we know global warming is a problem if we can't trust the U.S. temperature record?

The official record of temperatures in the continental United States comes from a networkof 1,221 climate-monitoring stations overseen by the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Until now,no one had ever conducted a comprehensive review of the quality of the measurement environment of those stations.

During the past few years I recruited a team of more than 650 volunteers to visually inspect and photographically document more than 860 of these temperature stations. We were shocked by what we found.

We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.

In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source.

In other words, 9 of every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.

Download Surfacestationsreport_spring09

Second Amendment Incorporation To The States -- Petitioner's Supreme Court Brief

MacDonald v. City of Chicago will be heard by the Supreme Court.  The Petitioner's argue that the Second Amendment should be incorporated to the states via the Due Process clause. 

Download Brief

Is America at war, or not?

World Net Daily - Opinion

Pat Buchanan

November 16, 2009

Are we at war – or not?

For if we are at war, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed headed for trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York? Why is he entitled to a presumption of innocence and all of the constitutional protections of a U.S. citizen?

Is it possible we have done an injustice to this man by keeping him locked up all these years without trial? For that is what this trial implies – that he may not be guilty.

And if we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that KSM was complicit in mass murder, by what right do we send Predators and Special Forces to kill his al-Qaida comrades wherever we find them? For none of them has been granted a fair trial.

When the Justice Department sets up a task force to wage war on a crime organization like the Mafia or MS-13, no U.S. official has a right to shoot Mafia or gang members on sight. No one has a right to bomb their homes. No one has a right to regard the possible death of their wives and children in an attack as acceptable collateral damage.

Yet that is what we do to al-Qaida, to which KSM belongs. 

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