Keep Talking Harry

Senator Harry Reid claimed recently that President Bush's judicial nominees, including Janice Rogers Brown, were "bad people". Senator Reid is evidently intent on proving himself a buffoon. It seems that every time he opens his mouth he says something astonishingly intemperate.

Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters posts excerpts from an editorial in the liberal Sacramento Bee showing just how silly Reid is and how impoverished is his judgment. The post is worth reading by anyone interested in determining Ms Brown's fitness for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

17,000 Scientists Oppose Kyoto

Little Green Footballs tips us to an article that our environmentalist friends ought to read if they can manage to wrest themselves away from bashing the president for his refusal to sign the Kyoto accords. The article comes from Canadafreepress.com and is written by Gary Pritchard. Pritchard says:

Last Thursday, I received a telephone call from Douglas Leahey, Ph.D., representing a group of Canadian scientists under the umbrella of "Friends of Science." It seems that they had been talking to Peter Worthington of the Toronto Sun, and he had mentioned to them that they should get in touch with me.

Dr. Leahey began by asking me how they could get a 27-minute documentary on television. I have 15 years experience of fighting with federal and provincial slush funds for that very thing. I asked some routine questions at first: Did they have a letter of licence? Had they rolled a camera before they got permission? Had they talked to the big broadcasters? Did they have a "pitch" and a budget?

Then I found out what their documentary was about. The story was incredible: it documented scientists--from Canada--speaking out against the $10-billion scam known as the Kyoto Protocol. Yes, the very same Kyoto Accord that our government has committed Canada and Canadians to support.

I understood instinctively that getting two scientists to agree at what time the sun is coming up tomorrow is--at best--difficult. But here were tens of thousands, from around the world, all agreeing on one issue: that there is no scientific evidence of man-made global warming.

The numbers of scientists staggered me--17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two thirds with advanced degrees, are against the Kyoto Agreement. The Heidelberg Appeal--which states that there is no scientific evidence for man-made global warming, has been signed by over 4,000 scientists from around the world since the petition's inception. I strongly questioned these high numbers, since I've had benefit of the Canadian government's public relations machine on this issue. Dr. Leahey has since sent documentation to back his figures up.

All those scientists were in total agreement: the Kyoto Protocol was complete fiction. The scientists are so committed to fighting the Kyoto Accord and its misrepresentation of the truth, that they produced a 27-minute documentary and paid for its production with their own money.

The rest of the column explains how the scientists have been blocked from airing their documentary on Canadian television. Apparently, these thousands of scientists have drawn conclusions about man-made global warming which are much at variance with liberal orthodoxy on the subject and must therefore be prevented from corrupting the minds of impressionable viewers with their noxious documentary.

The great liberal tradition of encouraging a free flow of competing ideas is dead in Canada as elsewhere. Today the only ideas that stand a chance of being disseminated in the Canadian media are those bearing the Left's stamp of approval.

We wish the Canadian scientists would bring their documentary to the States. We bet Fox would run it if nobody else would. There's a link at LGF to the full video.

Republicans Need to Act Like Winners

Rush Limbaugh discussed a Roll Call magazine report today that Senators Trent Lott and Ben Nelson are working on a deal that would block the Republicans from invoking the "nuclear option" in the senate. Rush said:

"They [Roll Call] are reporting that the two senators believe they're close to a deal that could avert triggering of the so-called nuclear option. The deal would do this. It would involve having a half dozen members of each party sign a memo of understanding that would bind all of them to certain actions on judicial nominations. The six Republicans would agree to block Majority Leader Bill Frist's plan to invoke the nuclear option and to give up trying to seek confirmation of three of the seven federal appeals court nominees who were filibustered in the last Congress. For their part the six Democrats would pledge to allow votes on the other four nominees, and vote to cut off filibusters on all other judicial nominees named by President Bush for the next year and a half, except in 'extreme circumstances'". The deal would include nominees for the Supreme Court, which could see one or two vacancies this summer. No commitments would be made for any nominations made after the 2006 elections.

This is essentially the deal floated last week by David Broder and Joe Biden and would allow the Democrats to veto Janice Rogers Brown and any other nominee they deemed to be "extreme". Rush had a lot to say about this that's worth reading (see here), and he says it much better than we could.

We'll repeat what we said last week about this, however. We're quite certain that if the Republicans cave on the matter of getting judges confirmed it will be the end of the Republican party as we know it. The need for conservative judges is the reason why a substantial number of voters cast their ballots for George Bush and other Republicans in November. It was the reason why Arlen Specter almost lost his primary race against Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania last spring and probably would have lost were it not for the endorsements he received from Rick Santorum and George Bush.

If Republicans show themselves unwilling to act like a majority party on this issue then conservatives will abandon it in numbers that will make the Israelite exodus from Egypt look like a few stragglers on a Crop Walk. Republicans scoff and ask where the conservatives will go. They'll go nowhere. They'll simply stay home from the polls and keep their check books in the desk drawer. And the Republican party will once again be the minority party it will deserve to be.

UPDATE: ConfirmThem.com has this from Sen. Lott's office:

Susan Irby, Lott's communications director, issued a statement saying there was in fact no deal and that Lott remained committed to having an up-or-down vote on all the pending judicial nominees.

We're relieved but still wary. These are Republicans, after all, that we're dealing with. These are people who couldn't find the political jugular if it was circled with magic marker. They think winning is not getting beat too badly. In other words, we'll believe it when we see the votes taking place for the judges on the senate floor.

Men on the Run

Abu al-Zarqawi's laptop continues to bear fruit. The latest announcement of a captured high ranking terrorist is of what the military describes as a key associate of al-Zarqawi's named Ghassan Amin who was apparently a pretty bad guy. See the link for details on his apprehension.

Meanwhile, over the past several months, coalition troops and Iraqi security forces have captured or killed more than 20 of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's trusted lieutenants and other high-ranking network members, military officials in Baghdad reported in a written statement on Friday. Hundreds of other members of the fugitive Jordanian's terror network also have been captured and killed as coalition and Iraqi forces continue to degrade his organization, the statement from Multinational Force Iraq headquarters said.

This link has some excellent insight into how Zarqawi's insurgency is being worn down by coalition pressure.

More on Ms Wilbanks

Jennifer Wilbanks apparently has a criminal record, having been arrested several times in the 1990s for shoplifting. We just thought we'd share that on the off chance that anyone might be interested.

It's both strange and sad that her parents can afford a wedding with 600 guests and yet she feels compelled to shoplift.

Bodies in the Garbage Dump

According to Strategy Page those fourteen bodies which turned up recently in an Iraqi garbage were Sunnis, probably victims of revenge killings by Shia tired of being bullied by the Sunni and angered by the murders of dozens of their fellow Shia whose bodies were found floating in a nearby river.

If this exchange of murders presages a larger conflict between Sunnis and Shia the terrorists may finally be on their way to achieving one of their goals, fomenting civil strife between these two sects.