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"If members of Congress don't pass my health care bill - I'll whoop 'em, I'll whoop 'em. That's right, you better not mess with me, and I'll have that stick."

7. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Conclusion 1. The politicization of academic scholarly work leads to confusing public debates. Scholarly papers published in peer reviewed journals are considered the archival record of research. There is usually no requirement to archive supplemental material such as code and data. Consequently, the supplementary material for academic work is often poorly documented and archived and is not sufficiently robust to withstand intense public debate. In the present example there was too much reliance on peer review, which seemed not to be sufficiently independent. Recommendation 1. Especially when massive amounts of public monies and human lives are...

See the Truth on climate history Terence Corcoran, Financial Post Published: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 It says it right here on the Official Climate Change Web site of the Government of Canada: "The 20th century has been the warmest globally in the past 1,000 years." This statement is wrong on several counts, and the Government of Canada knows it. After all, the knowledge that it is wrong is the product of two Canadians who have become internationally renowned in climate circles for having debunked the idea that the world is warmer than it has been in a millennium. The two...

Misled again: The Hockey Stick climate History is flawed, and so is the process by which its author's claims have been adjudicated Many people have heard the claim that the 1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the warmest year. Environment Canada headlined them on pamphlets mailed across the country a few years ago. These claims interested us in verifying exactly how scientists were able to assert so confidently that the late 20th century was warmer than when the Vikings were farming Greenland (the Medieval Warm Period). Last year, the National Post profiled our published...

So the Democrat leaders in the California Legislature, Fabian Nunez and Don Perata, want the governor to put pressure on Assembly Republicans to support their version of an infrastructure bond package. "He is the leader of the Republicans," Núñez said of Schwarzenegger. "One would think the governor has the responsibility of getting the Republicans on board to support whatever views he negotiates with the Legislature." As usual, the speaker fails to grasp the fundamentals of representative democracy. California Civics Lesson Number 1: The two-thirds vote in each house for state-wide bond measures is there for a reason. This is long-term...

AL ASAD, Iraq (Feb. 7, 2006) -- On Jan. 5, a suicide bomber tried to interrupt Iraq's rebuilding process at a police academy in Ramadi, but honor, courage and commitment by Iraqis and Marines alike was the only lasting result from the attack. The bond between one Marine, Cpl. Brendan N. Poelaert, a military working dog handler with 5th Battalion, 14th Marine Regiment Provisional Military Police Battalion, and an East Kingston, N.H., native, and his MWD, Flapoor, a 4-year-old Belgium Malinos, came through the carnage unscathed, even if the pair did not. Poelaert, an Exeter High School graduate, joined the...

Despite an outward appearance of business as usual, significant changes have been occurring at the California Coastal Commission, the potent and autonomous agency that oversees development along the state's 1,100-mile coast. In the past 18 months, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature have made seven appointments to the 12-member commission. These new appointees, including Chula Vista Mayor Steve Padilla, have quickly emerged as pragmatic and independent voices. They have arrived while the agency has progressively toughened enforcement against scofflaws and ratcheted up protection of coastal resources. The end result is that coastline developers have never faced more scrutiny. "(The agency)...

America still has a lot to learn. Its bold leadership helped end communism less than two decades ago, and the American leadership of the early 21st century is already allowing communism and repression to blossom yet again. This time, the threat is not directly European. Although Russia could re-fire its political machine at any time, the threat of tomorrow comes from Asia, specifically China. America enjoys good relationships with much of the continent, but Americans have every reason to be both frightened and angered by the threat of the Chinese empire. Already, there is talk of a potentially new world...

SACRAMENTO -- State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, already linked to a corruption probe, and Senate Minority Leader Dick Ackerman, R-Tustin, refused on Tuesday to drop a bill that could weaken campaign-finance probes against lawmakers. One probe that could be affected is apparently one involving Sen. Jim Battin, R-Palm Desert, who lashed out Tuesday at a state agency he accused of improperly revealing its inquiry. "It is disturbing the Fair Political Practices Commission has apparently chosen to violate their own rules prohibiting them from discussing an ongoing investigation and make comments to the press," Battin wrote in a...

Well, hellooo carrot and stick. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger just displayed dramatic examples of both in his dealings with the California Legislature, which is still reeling from it and is scrambling in private to figure out how to deal with it. But the real story as 2003 wraps up is the psychology of the governor himself, what we’ve learned after watching him for little more than one month in office and what it portends for California’s fiscal health. Schwarzenegger is a neophyte to Sacramento politics, where nothing is really as it appears and most legislators are working with both a public...

Do you agree with the U.S. Forest Service decision allowing equestrians to ride on trails through four natural areas? Vote here. Half way down page on right.

SRC="/img/shim.gif"> Wings could be a passing phase for the giant prickly stick insect (Image: OSF) Researchers have discovered that on a number of occasions in the past 300 million years, stick insects have lost their wings, then re-evolved them. Entomologists have described the revelation as "revolutionary". Michael Whiting, an evolutionary biologist from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and his team stumbled upon the finding while examining the DNA of 37 different phasmids, the stick and leaf insects famous for camouflaging themselves against plants, in a bid to work out their family tree.   The big wing switch Entomologists have...