Free Republic

As this week’s debate on climate change has unfolded, the American people and those watching us around the world had every reason to hope that we would act. Every credible scientist and expert believes action is necessary. This is critical and long overdue legislation that represents a good first step in addressing one of the most serious problems facing our generation. Like many of my Senate colleagues, I believe the legislation could have been made even better. Had there been a substantive Senate debate about some of the concerns with this bill, I believe the outcome could have generated broad...

Carbon Cult sickos are under fire for an interactive website that tells children they should die because they emit CO2. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's "Planet Slayer" site invites young children to take a "greenhouse gas quiz", asking them "how big a pig are you?". At the end of the quiz, the pig explodes, and ABC tells children at "what age you should die at so you don’t use more than your fair share of Earth’s resources!" It's one of a number of interactive features that "Get the dirt on greenhouse without the guilt trips. No lectures. No multinational-bashing (well, maybe...

Biting the Bullet: It’s Either McCain or Obama By Rene Guerra Never, ever, in her 232 years of illustrious existence, has America been at such a dire juncture where her enemies and rivals--domestic and foreign--are so determinedly poised and so advantageously positioned to undoing her. Islamofascism has vowed to destroy America, at any cost; “Death to America” the frenzied, mouth-foaming, suicidal Iranian throngs cry. Our brave troops in Iraq and Afghanistan keep fighting day in and day out the terrorists that the Saudi Wahhabis, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian Shiite fundamentalists, and the Syrian Baathists would otherwise be sending to...

Conservatives don’t love John McCain, but unless they’re considering abandoning their cause with Atlas Shrugged proportions, there’s no way in hell they’ll vote for Barack Obama. Sometimes, things have to get worse before they get better. And with that idea in mind, the conservative movement really is America’s crutch. The most specific example is economics, as conservatives constantly preach lower taxes and greater individual freedom. One would think that the Bush tax cuts, which have yielded continued economic growth (yes, our economy is growing, despite the lies you keep hearing), and the burgeoning economy during the Reagan Administration would provide...

Cornflakes in cereal killer warning By Rosemary Desmond May 13, 2008 03:28pm Article from: AAP CLIMATE change could lead to "killer cornflakes" with the most potent liver toxin ever recorded, an environmental health conference has been told. The effects of the toxins, known as mycotoxins, have been known since the Middle Ages when rye bread contaminated with ergot fungus was a staple part of the European diet, environmental health researcher Lisa Bricknell of Central Queensland University (CQU) said. "People started suffering mass hallucinations, manic depression, gangrene, abortions, reduced fertility and painful, convulsive death," Ms Bricknell told the 10th World Congress...

All indications are the Democrats will pick up seats in both the House and Senate, with the Senate likely being a couple of RHINOs away from the magic 60. McCain is no Reagan but he's the only thing standing in the way of the most liberal Senator in Senate becoming President with a clear majority in Congress and at a critical time with decisions to be made on the war on terror, the war in Iraq, heath care, taxes, illegal immigration and likely the Supreme Court. Sometimes you do have to pick the lesser of two evils. This is one...

FORGET DELEGATES AND the popular vote for the Democratic presidential nomination. The most important thing Hillary Clinton gained by winning the Pennsylvania primary yesterday was a better argument--indeed, a much better argument. Chances are, Clinton will trail Obama in the delegate count when the primaries end on June 3, as she does now. And while she may cut into his lead in the popular vote in the Democratic contests, she's not likely to exceed his vote total. So the only way she can capture the nomination is by convincing roughly 300 uncommitted super-delegates that Obama cannot defeat Republican John McCain...

A series of giant pipes in the oceans to mix surface and deeper water could be an emergency fix for the earth's damaged climate system, says the scientist behind the Gaia hypothesis. Professor James Lovelock, whose hypothesis says earth is a kind of superorganism composed of living and non-living elements, has fuelled controversy for three decades. He thinks the stakes are so high that radical solutions must be tried to fix our climate, even if they ultimately fail. In a letter to the journal Nature, he proposes vertical pipes 100 to 200 metres long and 10 metres wide be placed...

If you're wondering who's largely to blame for the alleged heating up of the climate you need look no further than Jane Fonda. That's what "Freakanomics" columnists Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt suggest in Sunday's New York Times Magazine. "If you were asked to name the biggest global warming villains of the past 30 years, here's one name that probably wouldn't spring to mind: Jane Fonda. But should it?" the authors ask. According to Editor & Publisher, the two cite Fonda's anti-nuclear thriller "The China Syndrome," which opened just 12 days before the Three Mile Island accident in...

<p>The last politician who took advice from the bond market was Bill Clinton. When he pushed for a tax hike back in 1993 to cut the budget deficit, it was under the assumption that bond investors would respond by bringing down interest rates. (The theory here is that deficits are inflationary. Inflation is bad for bonds.) Yet long-term interest rates surged from 6.45 percent when Clinton signed his tax-hike bill on Aug. 10, 1993, to 8.16 percent on Nov. 7, 1994, the day before the midterm congressional election where Republicans won back the House and Senate.</p>

Anti-depleted uranium activists have enlisted the assistance of all of Hawaii’s leftist alternative weeklies in a campaign against depleted uranium. The Hawaii Island Journal June 30 caries a front page cartoon skeleton in an aloha shirt and the headline “Radioactive us -- danger depleted uranium.” Articles on the alleged risks of depleted uranium appeared in quick succession in Honolulu Weekly, June 13, Maui Time, June 21, and Big Island Weekly, June 27 as well as the Journal. Big Island Weekly points out that the latest anti-DU hype is based on observations in South Kona by an activist armed with a...

MEXICO CITY — President Felipe Calderon of Mexico blasted the U.S. Senate's rejection of the immigration bill on Thursday, calling the senators' action "a grave error" that avoided a "sensible, rational and legal solution." "It's a mistake," Calderon said. "First, because it's a problem that's not being confronted. And with this evasive action the U.S. Senate is making it worse. "Secondly, by closing the door on legal immigration, the only thing the Senate does is open the door to illegal immigration." Calderon, appearing at a joint news conference with the visiting President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, said he continues to...

Along with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez has been the Bush administration’s voice in an immigration debate that has divided Republicans. Gutierrez, a Cuban immigrant who became chief executive of Kellogg’s, said this week in an interview that he’s not disappointed by Republican opposition to the immigration bill, and that he hasn’t seen evidence that Democrats want to withhold a victory for President Bush. Gutierrez repeatedly framed the debate as a national security issue, predicting victory in part because of the “inevitability” of immigration reform. Q: If the Senate doesn’t approve a comprehensive immigration reform bill...

If The Bipartisan Immigration Reform Bill Now Being Considered By The Senate Is Not Passed, The U.S. Will Be Left With A Status Quo That Is Unacceptable. The current immigration system is broken: Border security and interior enforcement laws need to be improved. Employers do not have the tools they need to verify the work eligibility of their employees with assurance. As many as 12 million illegal workers remain in the shadows. Only around 13 percent of green cards are awarded each year based on employment-related criteria, and far too little emphasis is placed on the skills and attributes necessary...

Geez, Senator Lott is really unhappy with "talk radio" and some of his colleagues: The Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who supports the bill, said: “Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.” At some point, Mr. Lott said, Senate Republican leaders may try to rein in “younger guys who are huffing and puffing against the bill.” I think that this is a complaint that the old days were more fun for senators, and that the senators especially don't like the new media's ability to inform, inspire and direct public opinion. The end result of...

Critics of the measure succeeded in sidetracking it last week, and given their continued opposition, the decision to bring it back for more debate does not necessarily portend passage.Reid and McConnell announced their plans in a brief, two sentence statement that capped days of private negotiations by key senators as well as Bush's personal involvement."We met this evening with several of the senators involved in the immigration bill negotiations," they said. Based on that discussion, the immigration bill will return to the Senate floor after completion of an unrelated energy measure now undergoing debate.At the White House, spokesman Scott Stanzel...

Senators Work to Revive Immigration Bill By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON — Key Republican and Democratic senators are reaching for a deal to resurrect their stalled immigration compromise by requiring that some $4 billion be spent on border security and workplace enforcement. The mandatory security funding is part of a plan to attract more Republican support for the measure, which grants legal status to millions of unlawful immigrants. In private meetings Wednesday, the bipartisan group that crafted the delicate compromise was hammering out a plan to allow votes on a limited set of Republican- and Democratic-sought changes...

Yesterday, a GOP aide, who is one of my sources in the Senate, gave me the rundown on what's happening with the Senate immigration bill (this is the same person who I talked to last week about the bill). First off, it does look like the Senate immigration bill is coming back. The conventional wisdom seems to be that it's going to be brought up right before the July 4th break, so that the Senate Republican leadership can try to use that as leverage to get votes (in other words, "vote for the bill or we'll have to waste your...

Senior GOP senators are embracing an eleventh-hour plan to pass an emergency supplemental bill for more border security money as a strategy to win over Republicans who have balked at the bipartisan immigration bill languishing in the Senate. But even as the emergency-spending approach gained momentum yesterday during President Bush’s rare visit to the Senate, the immigration bill’s strongest supporters warned that time is running out for an agreement to bring the measure back to the floor... Senate GOP Conference Chairman Jon Kyl (Ariz.), along with Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.), said they supported the idea of pushing ahead...