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Panel Absolves Climate Scientist By JOHN M. BRODER WASHINGTON — An academic board of inquiry has largely cleared a noted Pennsylvania State University climatologist of scientific misconduct, but a second panel will convene to determine whether his behavior undermined public faith in the science of climate change, the university said Wednesday. The scientist, Dr. Michael E. Mann, has been at the center of a roiling dispute arising from the unauthorized release of more than 1,000 e-mail messages from the servers of the University of East Anglia in England, home to one of the world’s premier climate research units. While the...

Pentagon Whitewash [Bill Bennett] There are devastating and important things happening in the news. Lest we forget, though: We are still in a war against Islamic Terrorism. And it still happens in America. November is not so far away that it deserves forgetting or whitewashing: An Arab terrorist named Nidal Hasan went to a health-care center, in a fort — at an Army base — in Texas, and opened fire killing 14 people while he shouted "Allahu Akbar." But you would not know this if you read the Pentagon Report on the massacre released Friday. Titled, "Protecting the Force: Lessons...

There are two basic problems with the grotesque non-report on the Islamist- terror massacre at Fort Hood (released by the Defense Department yesterday): * It's not about what happened at Fort Hood. * It avoids entirely the issue of why it happened. Rarely in the course of human events has a report issued by any government agency been so cowardly and delusional. It's so inept, it doesn't even rise to cover-up level. "Protecting the Force: Lessons From Fort Hood" never mentions Islamist terror. Its 86 mind-numbing pages treat "the alleged perpetrator," Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as just another workplace shooter...

The Office of Congressional Ethics has closed its investigation into Reps. John Murtha (D-Pa.), Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.) and their relationships to the lobbying firm PMA Group, and the OCE advised against a formal House ethics investigation, the lawmakers’ offices said Friday. George Behan, Dicks’ chief of staff, said the OCE, which reviews potential rules violations and refers investigations to the House ethics committee, informed the Washington lawmaker on Dec. 2 that it had recommended the inquiry be dismissed. “In his case, there was never anything there,” Behan said. Murtha spokesman Matt Mazonkey and Moran spokeswoman Emily...

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has a justly earned reputation this decade for voter registration fraud, embezzlement and other illegal acts. Yet according to an eagerly-awaited internal assessment released yesterday, the radical nationwide nonprofit network's main, if not sole, problem is inadequate employee training and oversight. The audit, supervised by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, had been prompted by employees of ACORN offices in different cities caught in a video sting this summer giving advice on how to hide assets and falsify loan documents. The New Orleans-based "anti-poverty" organization and its defenders see vindication....

The authors of these research papers have been personally attacked by name and by innuendo, being called "deniers" and so forth. This is how The Universe of Lies operates. This is the left. Wherever you find it, Marxists, socialists, communists, liberals, progressives, this is how they do everything. I want you to think about something, ladies and gentlemen, as we go to the break. Let's take a walk down Tobacco Road, shall we? Another teachable moment. You remember Big Tobacco, don't you? What was it about Big Tobacco that got Big Tobacco in so much trouble with the leftists? Didn't...

WASHINGTON — Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist. But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., started having second thoughts about his military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia. The Associated Press, quoted federal law enforcement...

On Friday night’s Hardball, guest host Lawrence O’Donnell enthusiastically promoted HBO’s new, glowing Ted Kennedy documentary. He began by declaring "There‘s so much ground to cover. We don‘t have enough time for this. And I want to show the people out there, people under 60, who don‘t know the early Ted Kennedy, don‘t remember the early Ted Kennedy, I want to show what you have got in this movie." But O’Donnell’s interview completely left out the biggest scandal of "the early Ted Kennedy" – the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick. This seemed especially odd as O’Donnell recounted with...

Stalin-era files raided By Charles Clover in Moscow Published: December 26 2008 19:36 | Last updated: December 26 2008 19:36 One hundred thousand witnesses to the terror of Joseph Stalin’s rule are stored on 12 computer hard disks compiled by Memorial, a Russian human rights group based in St Petersburg. Several terabytes of data include thousands of hours of audio histories, digital versions of faded photographs, video evidence of mass graves. With a few computer keystrokes, one could retrieve a faded denunciation written by a son against a father, or hear a ghostly voice reciting a forced confession or naming...

The inquiry into whether President-elect Barack Obama's staff had any inappropriate contacts with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was bound to meet its pre-conceived conclusion. President-Elect Barack Obama's inquiry into "inappropriate contacts" between his staff and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich over his vacated U.S. Senate seat has the appearance of a closed loop -- the conclusion came before the inquiry. The conclusion was: there were no inappropriate contacts. The inquiry found: Imagine, no inappropriate contacts. The inquiry began on Dec. 11 and ended Dec. 15. That's right, it took all of four days. The Obama transition staff never explained what "inappropriate...

President-elect Obama's office announced Monday afternoon that he is deferring his report about contacts with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich until next week, at the request of federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. In a statement, Transition Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said the review confirms that Obama had no contact with Blagojevich or his staff and that Obama's staff had no "inappropriate discussions" with the governor or his aides on selecting Obama's successor in the U.S. Senate. Obama had said Thursday: "What I want to do is to gather all the facts about any staff contacts that I might — may have —...

Chicago IN the recently concluded presidential race, I was unwillingly thrust upon the stage and asked to play a role in a profoundly dishonest drama. I refused, and here’s why. Unable to challenge the content of Barack Obama’s campaign, his opponents invented a narrative about a young politician who emerged from nowhere, a man of charm, intelligence and skill, but with an exotic background and a strange name. The refrain was a question: “What do we really know about this man?” Secondary characters in the narrative included an African-American preacher with a fiery style, a Palestinian scholar and an “unrepentant...

State whistleblowers tried to curtail greedy lending—and were thwarted by the Bush Administration and the financial industry....

Stalin's mass murders were 'entirely rational' says new Russian textbook praising tyrant By Will Stewart Last updated at 1:10 AM on 03rd September 2008 Comments (0) Add to My Stories Ruthless: 20 million died as a result of Stalin's actions Stalin acted ‘entirely rationally’ in executing and imprisoning millions of people in the Gulags, a controversial new Russian teaching manual claims. Fifty-five years after the Soviet dictator died, the latest guide for teachers to promote patriotism among the Russian young said he did what he did to ensure the country’s modernisation. The manual, titled A History of Russia, 1900-1945, will...

There is so much evidence of Hillary Clinton’s corruption, you’d think even a reporter for a mainstream news outlet would have to stumble over enough to write or talk about it. But ever since her husband popped up on the national scene, the media has downplayed every scandal. Now, a new book on the Democratic presidential frontrunner examines why Hillary became a media darling before she even set foot in the White House. Media Research Center President Brent Bozell’s “Whitewash” details the media’s efforts to protect the Clintons again and again. The White House travel office mess, “Filegate” and so...

Americans need and deserve the whole Hillary story. From the moment Hillary Clinton walked onto the national stage, the media hailed her as a woman on the verge of history, a feminist trailblazer, a pioneer of women's liberation, like a female Neil Armstrong landing on the moon in Guccis. If her husband was elected president, she would be the first First Lady to have an "independent" career of her own. The many liberals and feminists now in the press corps could visualize one of their own as a White House spouse, chafing at the demand to glue on a plastic...

On This Day In History July 18, 1969: Incident on Chappaquiddick Island Shortly after leaving a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy of Massachusetts drives an Oldsmobile off a wooden bridge into a tide-swept pond. Kennedy escaped the submerged car, but his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, did not. The senator did not report the fatal car accident for 10 hours. On the evening of July 18, 1969, while most Americans were home watching television reports on the progress of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission, Kennedy and his cousin Joe Gargan were hosting a cookout and party...

Tony Snow is about to appear live on FOX & Friends on FOX News. The subject is Bush's push for immigration "reform".

Just saw this on National live Japanese TV a few minutes ago. Our mouths dropped open in partial disbelief, but also with a cynical sense of "well, there they go again".The Japanese Government announced tonight that they are instructing all Japanese textbook publishing companies who produce history books for school children, to specifically take out an reference to "Japanese Imperial Army forcing Okinawa civilians to commit mass suicide during the Okinawa Campaign". This, however, is a historic truth, and well documented by the American military forces and Japanese/Okinawan survivors and eyewitnesses. It is history. But now the current Japanese...

In 1932-33, New York Times reporter Walter Duranty reported from the Soviet Union that there was no Communist-induced famine in the Ukraine, indeed, that no one was dying of starvation there. In fact, between 4 and 7 million Ukrainians were starved to death by Stalin's regime. Though Duranty's name has since been synonymous with Westerners who hid the evil committed by enemies of the West and enemies of liberty, he received the Pulitzer Prize for his false reporting. An unwillingness to identify evil and a desire to hurt those who do confront it were not confined to Western fellow travelers...