It’s Tuesday, March 6th, 2012….and before we begin, two connected commentaries on the deliberately distorted contraceptive clash, both courtesy of the WSJ:

First,….

Bishop Dolan’s Liberty Letter

The Catholic Cardinal describes a chilling visit to the White House.

 

The debate over the Obama Administration’s birth control mandate has been ingloriously fact-free, even more than usual. So amid demonstrably false claims about a plot to relegate women to the era of “Mad Men,” if not Salem, Massachusetts circa 1692, Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s letter on religious freedom deserves more readers.

“We have made it clear in no uncertain terms to the government that we are not at peace with its invasive attempt to curtail the religious freedom we cherish as Catholics and Americans,” the archbishop of New York wrote in a public epistle to Catholic bishops last Friday. It’s an eloquent and powerful document, though not one that received much of any media notice. “We did not ask for this fight, but we will not run from it,”  he continues. (Courtesy of Shakespeare and Henry V, Act 3, Scene 6.)

Cardinal Dolan explains that “As pastors and shepherds, each of us would prefer to spend our energy engaged in and promoting the works of mercy to which the Church is dedicated: healing the sick, teaching our youth and helping the poor.” The problem, and the genesis of this Catholic confrontation with Washington, is the government’s “bureaucratic intrusion into the internal life of the church” and its bid “to define what constitutes church ministry and how it can be exercised.”

The test of pluralism in a democracy is the protection afforded to minority views, especially of religious faith and practice. Nine of 10 health plans already cover contraceptive and sterilization methods, and they present no ethical or moral qualms in a majority of the others. (The economics are another matter.)

But the Administration is using raw political force to compel a small subset of schools, hospitals, charities and other religious institutions “to maintain in our policies practices which our Church has consistently taught are grave wrongs in which we cannot participate,” as Cardinal Dolan puts it.

He also relates a remarkable meeting that he says the White House convened with the bishops to “work out the wrinkles” of the mandate. Having accepted the invitation, the bishops asked if concrete policy changes like broadening the mandate’s exemptions were “all off the table. They were informed that they are.”

In other words, the White House’s solution is merely for the bishops to shut up about the wrinkles. Cardinal Dolan writes that “there was not even a nod to the deeper concerns about trespassing upon religious freedom.” White House staffers also cited some writings by vicars of the Catholic left in support of the mandate, in effect telling the bishops that they know less about church teachings than your average Washington Post columnist.

As a study in ideology and power, the anecdote is chilling, compounded by all the recent claims by Democrats and liberals that Catholics who actually abide by their faith are opposed to modernity. Such prejudice is supposedly defunct in contemporary America, except when it’s practiced against religion. (Christianity, Judaism and Mormonism that is!)

Cardinal Dolan touches on the way the mandate’s supporters are having a false debate about “access” to health care, which everyone supports, but he doesn’t say—though we can say—how cheap contraception is in most cases. (See below.) Prescription birth control pills generally cost between $15 and $50 a month, and Wal-Mart and Target sell generic versions for as little as $9. The idea that college coeds are going broke from this small and predictable expense is ludicrous.

“Religious freedom is our heritage, our legacy and our firm belief,” Cardinal Dolan concludes. The sad reality is that his letter will not persuade the dominant wing of America’s governing political party from insisting that religion kneel before its secular will.

And in a closely related item, Cathy Ruse, senior fellow for legal studies at the Family Research Council, and the recipient of a J.D. from Georgetown Law in 1989, describes…. 

Limbaugh and Our Phony Contraception Debate

A student demands that a Catholic school give up its religion to pay for her birth-control pills.

 

Last week Sandra Fluke, a student at Georgetown University Law Center, went to Congress looking for a handout. She wants free birth-control pills, and she wants the federal government to make her Catholic school give them to her. I’m a graduate of Georgetown Law and former chief counsel of the House Subcommittee on the Constitution. Based on her testimony, I wonder how much Ms. Fluke really knows about the university or the Constitution. (About as much as Tick-Tock!)

As a law student 20 years ago, I wasn’t confronted by crucifixes in the classroom or, in truth, with any religious imagery anywhere. In that respect the law school has a different “feel” than the university. The law school chapel was an unadorned, multipurpose room in the basement used for Mass when it wasn’t used for Gilbert and Sullivan Society rehearsals and club meetings. Among the clubs while I was there, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance was particularly vigorous.

I was not Catholic when I attended Georgetown Law, but I certainly knew the university was. So did Ms. Fluke. She told the Washington Post that she chose Georgetown knowing specifically that the school did not cover drugs that run contrary to Catholic teaching in its student health plans. During her law school years she was a president of “Students for Reproductive Justice” and made it her mission to get the school to give up one of the last remnants of its Catholicism. Ms. Fluke is not the “everywoman” portrayed in the media.

Georgetown Law School has flung wide its doors to the secular world. It will tolerate and accommodate all manner of clubs and activities that run contrary to fundamental Catholic beliefs. But it is not inclined to pay for or provide them. And it has the right to do so—to say “this far and no further.”

When congressional committee counsels plan hearings, they look for two kinds of witnesses: “experts” and “victims.” The experts are typically lawyers or law professors who can explain the constitutional authority for the new law and its legal impact, and the victims illustrate why the law is needed.

At the hearing of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee chaired by Nancy Pelosi, Sandra Fluke testified as a victim. Having to buy your own contraception is a burden, she said. She testified that all around her at Georgetown she could see the faces of students who were suffering because of Georgetown’s refusal to abandon its Catholic principles.

Exactly what does the face of a law student who must buy her own birth-control pills look like? Did I see them all around me and just not know it? Do male law students who must buy their own condoms have the same look? Perhaps Ms. Fluke should have brought photos to Congress to illustrate her point.

In her testimony, Ms. Fluke claimed that, “Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school.” That’s $1,000 per year. But an employee at a Target pharmacy near the university told the Weekly Standard last week that one month’s worth of generic oral contraceptives is $9 per month. “That’s the price without insurance,” the employee said. (It’s also $9 per month at Wal-Mart.)

What about Rush Limbaugh? I won’t defend his use of epithets (for which he’s apologized), but I understand his larger point. At issue isn’t inhalers for asthmatics or insulin for diabetics. Contraception isn’t like other kinds of “health care.” Yes, birth-control pills can be prescribed to address medical problems, though that’s relatively rare and the Catholic Church has no quarrel with their use in this circumstance. And the university’s insurance covers prescriptions in these cases.

Still, Ms. Fluke is not mollified. Why? Because at the end of the day this is not about coverage of a medical condition. (Just as gay marriage has nothing to do with “equal rights” for homosexuals.)

Ms. Fluke’s crusade for reproductive justice is simply a demand that a Catholic institution pay for drugs that make it possible for her to have sex without getting pregnant. It’s nothing grander or nobler than that. Georgetown’s refusal to do so does not mean she has to have less sex, only that she has to take financial responsibility for it herself.

Should Ms. Fluke give up a cup or two of coffee at Starbucks each month to pay for her birth control, or should Georgetown give up its religion? Even a first-year law student should know where the Constitution comes down on that.

Which says what about Fluke….or The Obamao for that matter?!?

Bottom line?  This has nothing to do with reproductive freedom, women’s health or really, contrary to what Cathy Ruse wrote, the ability to engage in indiscriminate premarital sex without fear of pregnancy.  It’s all about the deliberate destruction of America’s morals, the systematic desensitization of our sense of right and wrong, a purposeful plunge into the morass of moral relativism.

Now, without further ado, here’s The Gouge!

Today, we both kick off and close the Tuesday edition with two bits of good news, the first brought to us by via the WSJ:

A Wichita Shocker

You can beat city hall.

 

Local politicians like to get in bed with local business, and taxpayers are usually the losers. So three cheers for a voter revolt in Wichita, Kansas last week that shows such sweetheart deals can be defeated.

In late 2011 the Wichita city council passed (six votes to one) a bill exempting the new Ambassador Hotel, owned by real-estate developers, from 75% of the city hotel tax, on top of at least $10 million in other subsidies. The measure was sold in the name of jobs and urban redevelopment, and the local power brokers were all for it: the Chamber of Commerce, the political class, the city newspaper. All the skids were greased and, truth be told, hotel taxes are too high in Wichita, while the money at stake, $2.25 million over 15 years, was small.

But voters were so enraged by the insider dealing that they launched a petition drive for a voter referendum. Despite hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by hotel advocates, almost 10 times more than opponents spent, voters routed the subsidy 61% to 39%.

The elites are stunned, but they shouldn’t be. The core issue is fairness—and not of the soak-the-rich kind that President Obama practices. One of the leaders of the opposition, Derrick Sontag, director of Americans for Prosperity in Kansas, says that what infuriated voters was the veneer of “political cronyism.”

What Americans seem to want most from government these days is equal treatment. They increasingly realize that powerful government nearly always helps the powerful, whether the beneficiaries are a union that can carve a sweet deal as part of an auto bailout or corporations that can hire lobbyists to write a tax loophole.

This is why Americans hate the Obama Administration’s Solyndra handouts, or rebel when city hall abuses eminent domain to bully people out of their homes for a big business the way New London, Connecticut did in the Kelo case for Pfizer Corp. Let’s hope for more such popular uprisings.

And since we’re on the subject of rampant, unrestrained corruption, we turn to the source, courtesy of the Economist and the City of Chicago:

On March 15th the former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, will start to serve a 14-year sentence for corruption in a federal low-security prison. In this part of America, he is treading a well-worn path. Over four decades, four governors (out of seven) have been convicted of corruption.

A new report, by Dick Simpson and his colleagues at the University of Chicago, documents the extent to which the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago have been hotbeds of corruption. Chicago, they conclude, has the dubious distinction of being the federal district with the most convictions since 1976.

Since then, 1,828 elected officials, appointees, government employees and a few private individuals have been convicted of corruption in Illinois, and 84% of these were in its Northern District—a judicial zone which contains the entire Chicago metropolitan area. During this time around one-third of the city’s aldermen have been convicted of corruption. . . . All the corrupt governors and 26 of the aldermen had tried to extract bribes from builders, developers, business owners and those seeking to do business with the city or the state. Those who paid bribes either assumed, or were told, that payment was necessary for zoning changes, building permits or any other government action.

You can depend on one thing: the current crop of bad apples….

….most assuredly didn’t fall far from the tree!

Turning now to International News of Note, courtesy today of The New Media Journal, we learn the Iranians may well be one helluva lot closer to joining the Nuclear Club than anyone in the White House is willing to let on:

North Korea Tested Iranian Warhead or ‘Dirty Bomb’ in 2010

 

German and Japanese intelligence sources on Monday, confirmed — and qualified — reports in the German Der Spiegel and Welt am Sonntag that Western intelligence had known for 11 months that at least one of North Korea’s covert nuclear tests in 2010 was carried out on an Iranian radioactive bomb or nuclear warhead.

North Korea carried out two covert underground nuclear explosions in mid-April and around May 11 of 2010 equivalent to 50- 200 tonnes of TNT. Two highly lethal heavy hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium, typical of a nuclear fission explosion and producing long-term contamination of the atmosphere, were detected and analyzed by Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBOTO) monitoring stations in South Korea, Japan and Russia.

The presence of tritium in one of the tests led several intelligence agencies watching North Korea’s nuclear program and its longstanding links with Iran and Syria to examine the possibility that Pyongyang had tested the internal mechanism of a nuclear warhead on Iran’s behalf. This strongly indicated to German and Japanese intelligence that Iran had already developed the nuclear warhead’s outer shell and attained its weaponization.

Another possibility examined was that North Korea had tested an Iranian “dirty bomb” — i.e. a conventionally detonated device containing nuclear substances. Tritium would boost its range, force and lethality. This was one of the conclusions of atmospheric scientist Larsk-Erik De Geer of the Swedish Defense Research Agency in Stockholm, who spent a year studying the data collected by various CTBOTO stations tracking the North Korean explosions.

The Japanese and German sources found confirmation of their suspicions that North Korea had abetted Iran’s nuclear aspirations in three events:

▪ Shortly after the April explosion, a large group of Iranian nuclear scientists and technicians arrived in Pyongyang. They apparently came to take part in setting up the second test in May.

▪ In late April, Tehran shipped to Pyongyang a large quantity of uranium enriched to 20+ percent — apparently for use in the May test.

▪ Straight after the May test, the Central Bank of Iran transferred $55 million to the account of the North Korean Atomic Energy Commission. The size of the sum suggests that it covered the fee to North Korea not just of one but the two tests — the first a pilot and the second, a full-stage test.

It is not by chance that this incriminating disclosure about Iran’s nuclear achievements sees the light Monday, just hours before US President Barack Obama receives Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in the White house for an argument over an expeditious military action to stop Iran going all the way to a nuclear weapon.

The disclosure invalidates the main point the US President made in his speech Sunday to the pro-Israeli lobby AIPAC convention in Washington that there was still time for diplomatic pressure and sanctions to bring Iran’s leaders to a decision to halt their nuclear momentum before military action was called for, whether by the US or Israel.

It now appears that Western intelligence has known about the North Korean tests for Iran for eleven months. Therefore, it is too late for him to try and persuade the Israeli prime minister that there is still time to spare for cutting short a nuclear Iran.

Which is why rumors continue to fly Israel is planning to take out Iran’s nuclear not with a conventional airstrike, but using its tactical nuclear arsenal.  And who can blame them; after all, Israel’s fighting for its very existence….not reelection.

For additional details on the now-discredited Sandra Flake “testimony”, we turn to Noel Sheppard and Newsbusters.org:

Attention Media: Walmart and Target Have Been Offering $9 Birth Control Since 2007

 

For over two months the Left and their media minions have been making a big stink about the need for mandatory health insurance coverage of contraceptives. In all this fuss and distraction from the real problems this nation is facing, nobody noticed that since 2007 Walmart has been offering a month’s worth of birth control pills for only $9 (emphasis added):

BENTONVILLE, Ark. – Sept. 27, 2007 – Walmart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) today announced phase two of its $4 prescription program with changes that will help even more Americans deal with the high-cost of healthcare. The program – which has already saved Americans more than $610 million in its first year – has been expanded in two key ways:

More medicines covering more categories – Important prescription medicines have been added to the $4 program covering glaucoma, attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD), fungal infections and acne. Fertility and prescription birth control will also be included at $9, compared to national average prices ranging from $24 to $30 per month and saving women an estimated $15 to $21 per month – $180 to $250 annually.

Two days later, Target matched Walmart’s offer.

The updated Retail Prescription Drug List for Walmart (Target’s online pharmacy also lists 28-day supplies of Sprintec and Tri-Sprintec are available for $9) shows the following women’s health medications (birth control bolded):

Women’s Health                                         $4, 30-day $10, 90-day
Estradiol 0.5mg tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . 30 . . . . . .90
Estradiol 1mg tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . …….. . . .. 30 . . . . . .90
Estradiol 2mg tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ……….30 . . . . . .90
MedroxyprogesteroneAcetate 2.5mg tab . . . . . 30 . . . . . .90
Medroxyprogesterone Acetate 5mg tab . . . . . . 30 . . . . . .90
Medroxyprogesterone Acetate 10mg tab . . . . . 10 . . . . . .30
Alendronate SOD 35mg tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 . . . . . .12
Alendronate SOD 70mg tab . . . . . . . . . . . . ……. 4 . . . . . .12
Clomiphene 50mg tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ………. 5 . . . . . .15
Sprintec 28-day tab . . . . . . . . .. . .. . …….28 . . . . .N/A
Tamoxifen 10mg tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ……..60 . . . . . 180
Tamoxifen 20mg tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ……..30 . . . . . .90
Tri-Sprintec 28-day tab . . . . . .. . . . . . ….28 . . . . .N/A

A 28-day supply of Sprintec and Tri-Sprintec are still available for $9. The other medications are mostly for menopause and other women’s health issues. Add it all up, and women can get birth control at Walmart for the cost of two lattes at Starbucks.

Yet for the past two months, the Left and their media minions have been making contraceptives out as so expensive that women can’t possibly afford them if they’re not included in their health insurance plans. What’s the next red herring the press are going to concoct to distract the public’s attention from soaring gas prices, staggering budget deficits, stubbornly high unemployment, and another war looming in the Middle East?

Meanwhile, in keeping with the love and forgiveness which has come to characterize the Left….

Fluke says Limbaugh apology means nothing

 

The Georgetown University law student labeled a “slut” by conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh says his apology changes nothing and that Americans have to decide whether to support companies that continue to advertise on his program.

Sandra Fluke told ABC’s “The View” on Monday that she hasn’t heard from Limbaugh since he issued a written apology late Saturday. But she says his comments about her testimony before members of Congress have been so personal, she’d rather not have him call. Fluke testified to Democratic members of Congress in support of a requirement that health care companies provide coverage for contraception.

Seven companies have now pulled advertising from Limbaugh’s three-hour radio show. Fluke says his comments were an “attempt to silence me” and an attack on women’s health.

For your information, here’s a list of the companies who have pulled their ads: Sleep Number, Quicken Loans, Legal Zoom, Citrix, Carbonite, ProFlowers, Tax Resolution, AOL, Bonobos, Sears and Allstate.

We encourage every one of you to email each of these companies informing them you will not use their services until they reverse their craven capitulation.

Then there’s this from James Taranto and Best of the Web:

….The kerfuffle was no fluke but a left-liberal set piece. It started 2½ weeks ago, when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings on the ObamaCare contraception mandate and its implications for religious liberty. The Washington Examiner’s Byron York reports that Democrats originally chose Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State over Fluke to testify for the anti-religious-liberty side.

Then they sandbagged the Republicans. They asked, too late, for Fluke to be subbed in for Lynn, then told Lynn not to bother showing up. When the hearing took place, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (this columnist’s congressman, but don’t blame us) demanded: “Where are the women?” Although it was the Dems who chose Lynn over Fluke and the second panel of witnesses included two female members, liberal media dutifully propagated the “Republican sexism” charge. A week later, House Democrats held a mock hearing where Fluke testified.

Like Cindy Sheehan, Fluke was a left-wing activist cast in the role of everywoman (or as much of an “everywoman” as a student at an elite law school can be). “Fluke has a long history of feminist advocacy,” reports the Daily Caller: “While [an undergraduate] at Cornell, Fluke’s organized activities centered on the far-left feminist and gender equity movements. Fluke participated in rallies supporting abortion, protests against war in Iraq and efforts to recruit other womens’ [sic] rights activists to campus.” She even got a bachelor’s degree in something called “Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies.”

“Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school,” Fluke said in her testimony. But last Tuesday The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack debunked the claim:

Fluke’s testimony was very misleading. Birth control pills can be purchased for as low as $9 per month at a pharmacy near Georgetown’s campus. According to an employee at the pharmacy in Washington, D.C.’s Target store, the pharmacy sells birth control pills–the generic versions of Ortho Tri-Cyclen and Ortho-Cyclen–for $9 per month. “That’s the price without insurance,” the Target employee said.

Nine dollars a month amounts to $324 over three years of law school.

Soooo….whatever else Fluke might be, she’s most certainly a liar.

And in the “Biting The Hand That Feeds You” segment, courtesy today of Doug Burr, the Illinois’ Rockford Register Star informs us….

Downtown Rockford businesses wary of proposed Dollar Tree

A proposal for a new shopping center downtown anchored by a Dollar Tree store is generating protest from some business owners and patrons who think the area deserves better. Several city leaders have come out in support of the project, from Mayor Larry Morrissey and City Administrator Jim Ryan to Ald. Doug Mark, R-3, and Ald. Frank Beach, R-10.

The new building would be in Mark’s ward. Beach chairs the Code and Regulation Committee, which meets Monday night to discuss the $2.5 million project that will feature a 15,000-square-foot, multitenant building and 60-space parking lot. The proposed site at Jefferson and Third streets is a vacant lot.

….Crystal Douglas co-owns Wired Cafe, which is about two blocks away from the proposed development. Douglas isn’t happy that she didn’t know about the project until the last minute. “I’m disappointed that businesses were not informed of this or given an opportunity to state how we feel,” she said.

Douglas runs her downtown cafe with her daughters. She thinks a dollar store would be a step in the wrong direction for downtown redevelopment. “We want something classier,” Douglas said. “([Developer] First Rockford Group President Sunil Puri) has the money. He has the connections. Why can’t he bring in something classier? … Something like an Urban Outfitters would be more fitting with what downtown is trying to do.”

City leaders say the land has been vacant for several years and now has weeds growing through the pavement. It’s blighted, they said, and they want to get rid of it. And Puri’s offer is the best they’ve seen in years. “I understand the concerns. This is not going to be the pariah or the savior of downtown,” Ryan said. “But it is going to help us address blight, and it’s going to benefit us in our long-term goal of making Third Street a two-way road. … I think people have this misconception of dollar stores. They’re like the new Ben Franklin.”

New construction downtown is an anomaly in and of itself. If First Rockford builds this summer, it will make the first time in six years and only the seventh time since 1960 that there has been non-government-backed, private-sector construction downtown.

….“There hasn’t been much new investment downtown,” Beach said. “I think this might be a good opportunity for us. Dollar Tree has a good reputation for interior design. From what I’ve seen of the exterior design, it looks like something that’s consistent with other new developments and will be consistent with other nearby buildings.”

The headline said “Businesses”, as in “plural”, i.e., more than the one we could find quoted in the article.  That inconvenient bit of misleading reporting aside, Crystal Douglas demanding an Urban Outfitters in Rockford, IL is akin to Cousin Eddie….

….holding out for a management position.

And in the Environmental Moment, the AEI‘s Jon Entine reports a.…

New York Times reversal: Cornell University research undermines hysteria contention that shale gas is ‘dirty’

 

There are new twists to in the ever-entertaining faux debate over the dangers of shale gas. The New York Times, which turned obscure Cornell University marine ecologist Robert Howarth into an anti-fracking rock star in its questionable spring series on shale gas, and got hammered for it by its own public editor—I‘ll take some of the credit—is finally getting on the science bandwagon.

Last April, the Times ran two articles in a week heavily promoting Howarth’s bizarre claim that shale gas generates more greenhouse gas emissions than the production and use of coal. It would be difficult to overstate the influence of this paper, which ricocheted through the media echo chamber and was even debated in the British parliament and the European Union.

When the Times didn’t report then, and until now has almost systematically ignored, is that almost every independent researcher — at the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Energy Department and numerous independent university teams, including a Carnegie Mellon study partly financed by the Sierra Club — has slammed Howarth’s conclusions.

Within the field, Howarth is considered an activist, not an independent scientist. But you’d never know that reading the Times’ fracking coverage, with independent lefty columnist Joe Nocera as the notable, and refreshing, exception.

Maybe a little fresh air is finally leaking into the Times insular chambers. Calling Cathles’ report a “fresh rebuttal” of Howarth’s much-maligned study, Dot Earth’s Andrew Revkin cites the latest researcher to diss Howarth’s shaky science, a colleague at Cornell, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences professor Lawrence Cathles, who is an expert in this field, unlike Howarth.

Cathles convincingly demolishes Howarth’s four major claims, two of which we’ll highlight here:

• Howarth et al. claimed that shale gas wells are virtual methane sieves. But as Cathles shows, Howarth appears to have deliberately used 2007 data, a century ago by shale gas technology standards. He’s off by 10-20 times—at least.

• Howarth claimed that emissions during well completions are far greater than for other gas wells. Among other things, Howarth used decades old data from the Soviet Union to make this bogus case.

Cathles conclusion is critical but unremarkable in that reflects the conclusions of almost every major researcher in the field, except the favorite of the Times, and hardleft advocacy magazines such as Mother Jones: “The data clearly shows that substituting natural gas for coal will have a substantial greenhouse benefit under almost any set of reasonable assumptions.”

Blogger Revkin may finally “get it,” though no signs the paper itself is opening its mind. “[T]he notion that gas holds no advantage over coal, in weighing the climate implications of energy choices, is fading fast (to my reading of the science and that of many others.),” he wrote.

Congratulations, Andrew, for catching up with the science….about a year late! Revkin of course was the Times’ reporter who put Howarth onto the fast track to progressive icon statues with his shallow reporting last April.

In fact, the farcical “shale gas is dirtier than coal” claim was never scientifically seriousness enough to fade; it is and was a fiction of activists, including Howarth, whose goal is to undermine a balanced scientific debate on shale gas and climate change.

The questions for the Times, Mother Jones and other publications, whose reporting so far appears to echo hard left talking points:

• Will you report this return to science in your paper or continue to bury it on the web?

• When will we see the investigative piece airing out the dirty linen that led to Howarth’s rigged study, including the funding stream from the Park Foundation, which yearly gives millions of dollars to media organizations and community groups targeted specifically to undermine America’s goal to reach a balanced energy future.

Tip to the Times: follow the science.

Sound advice the EPA continues to purposefully ignore:

Pennsylvania spars with EPA over gas drilling

 

Tugging on rubber gloves, a laboratory worker kneels before a gushing spigot behind Kim Grosso’s house and positions an empty bottle under the clear, cold stream. The process is repeated dozens of times as bottles are filled, marked and packed into coolers. After extensive testing, Grosso and dozens of her neighbors will know this week what may be lurking in their well water as federal regulators investigate claims of contamination in the midst of one of the nation’s most productive natural gas fields.

More than three years into the gas-drilling boom that’s produced thousands of new wells, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Pennsylvania are tussling over regulation of the Marcellus Shale, the vast underground rock formation that holds trillions of cubic feet of gas.

The state says EPA is meddling. EPA says it is doing its job.

Grosso, who lives near a pair of gas wells drilled in 2008, told federal officials her water became discolored a few months ago, with an intermittent foul odor and taste. Her dog and cats refused to drink it. While there’s no indication the problems are related to drilling, she hopes the testing will provide answers.

“If there is something wrong with the water, who is responsible?” she asked. “Who’s going to fix it, and what does it do to the value of the property?”

Gee….the water at our parents’ cottage on Seneca Lake in Upstate New York went bad some 20 years ago….without the benefit of fracking or any other sinister anthropogenic force.  Turns the well became contaminated with sulpher, which, while not dangerous, was certainly odiferous.  But that COULDN’T be the case here.

By the way, we got the above photo purporting to portray the impact of fracking on drinking water from the website of a woman who goes by the name Red Jezebel, and who describes herself thusly:

“I am a warrior, witch, sorcerer, unapologetic feminist, earth mother, filmmaker, teacher, & student. Most of all I am a WOMAN who understands that the art of critical thinking is lost in our current culture & in order to restore balance & logic women must take back their power. For without this fundamental change, & shift in ideals, the human race cannot survive.”

Any questions?

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this appropriate play on words from Carl Polizzi:

He’s bombin’ all right.

Next up, another sordid story ripped from the pages of the Crime Blotter, courtesy today of Joe Flood:

Hospital Employee Arrested After Robbery Attempt

 

A Virginia Hospital Center worker has been arrested and charged in a bizarre attempted robbery at the hopsital. Police say 48-year-old Alexandria resident Albert Murray, an employee at the hopsital’s cafeteria, tried to rob his own employer over the weekend.

According to police, Murray took a taxi to the hospital around 4:00 p.m. on Saturday. While the cab waited outside, Murray allegedly went to the food service office in the cafeteria, confronted his manager with a knife, and demanded the combination to the safe. When the manager insisted she didn’t know the combination, police say, Murray bound her hands and feet with electrical cord, placed the safe on an office chair, and wheeled the chair out to the waiting cab.

The taxi driver became suspicious as Murray was loading the safe into the trunk and jumped out of the cab, according to police. At that point, hospital security ran outside. Murray is then accused of getting into the driver’s seat of the cab and trying to drive away. The cab driver, however, somehow managed to jump into the passenger seat of the hybrid taxi and kill the ignition with the press of a button.

….Murray was charged with abduction, grand larceny, two counts of robbery, and possession of PCP (My….what a surprise!), according to Arlington County Police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck.

Maybe Murray thought, like Michelle Obama, he was owed far more money than his position deserved.

And finally, as promised, we’ll call it a wrap with another bit of good news forwarded by Harris Jordan:

Md. Gun Law Found Unconstitutional 

 

Maryland’s requirement that residents show a “good and substantial reason” to get a handgun permit is unconstitutional, according to a federal judge’s opinion filed Monday.

States can channel the way their residents exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms, but because Maryland’s goal was to minimize the number of firearms carried outside homes by limiting the privilege to those who could demonstrate “good reason,” it had turned into a rationing system, infringing upon residents’ rights, U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg wrote.

“A citizen may not be required to offer a `good and substantial reason’ why he should be permitted to exercise his rights,” he wrote. “The right’s existence is all the reason he needs.”

No penumbras from any mysterious emanations here; just sound jurisprudence based what the Constitution says, NOT what someone would LIKE it to say.

Magoo