I just came back from the playground with my boys. There, I met a grandmother caring for her daughter-in-law and two delightful grandchildren. Grandma had come in to San Diego from Anchorage to do so, because her son is in Iraq, on his second tour with the Army. He being in Iraq made this New Year a better one for Iraqis.

Reuters reports that, “In a safer Baghdad, Iraqis party for 2008.”

A woman buys a present in preparation for new year celebrations in Baghdad, December 31, 2007.
REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen

2008 arrived in a less-violent Baghdad, and residents said it was the first real party they had seen in years.

At the stroke of midnight, exuberant locals fired into the air with automatic rifles, sending red tracer fire streaking over the city, as fireworks lit up the sky.

While the city is still far from peaceful and many of the festive gatherings had a tentative feel, many said it was a happier occasion than they could have dared to hope just a few months ago….

Salah al-Lami, 27, the singer who performed at the Palestine ballroom and then for another New Year's Eve crowd at the Sheraton Hotel across the street, said it was the first time he had sung before a live audience in four years.

"This will be the year that we take our freedom!" he told Reuters after singing through a boisterous set in front of a packed dancefloor.

"When I went up on the stage and started singing I felt like I was performing for my family."

From a Grandma's family in San Diego and in Iraq, a happier New Year for Iraqis.

London’s Times reports on a Freedom of Information Act revelation that,

Some hard-of-hearing patients in England are having to wait more than two years for an NHS hearing aid…. The average wait was 22 weeks in the 99 primary care trusts (PCTs) across the country that responded to the request. Another 53 failed to reply…. The RNID [Royal National Institute for Deaf People] said that 39 per cent of new patients in England wait for more than a year to get their hearing aids. Brian Lamb, for the institure, said: “If you struggle to pick up every word, hearing aids are a lifeline to work, friends and family.”

One has to wonder about nationalized healthcare advocates on this side of the Atlantic, not hearing that it is a cure worse than the disease.

Steven Milloy, aka The Junkman (bio), at JunkScience.com once again speaks science to nonsense in his “Top 10 Climate Myth-Busters for 2007.” [HT Maggie's Farm; P.S.: Don’t miss the photo of Santa down the chimney]

At each of Milloy’s top ten, you can link to the science behind the myths

Top 10 Climate Myth-Busters for 2007

“I’ve made up my mind. Don’t confuse me with the facts.” That saying most appropriately sums up the year in climate science for the fanatic global warming crowd.

As Al Gore, the United Nations, grandstanding politicians and celebrities, taxpayer-dependent climate researchers, socialist-minded Greens, climate profiteers and other members of the alarmist railroad relentlessly continued their drive for greenhouse gas regulation in 2007, the year’s scientific developments actually pointed in the opposite direction. Here’s the round-up:

1. Cracked crystal balls. Observed temperature changes measured over the last 30 years don’t match well with temperatures predicted by the mathematical climate models relied on by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), researchers reported.
The models predict significantly warmer atmospheric temperatures than actually occurred, despite the availability of more and better quality data and improved modeling efforts since the late-1970s.
“We suggest, therefore, that projections of future climate based on these models be viewed with much caution,” the researchers concluded.

2. The big yellow ball in the sky. The Sun may have contributed 50 percent or more of the global warming thought to have occurred since 1900, according to a new historical temperature reconstruction showing more variation in pre-industrial temperatures than previously thought.
The researchers found that “the climate is very sensitive to solar changes and a significant fraction of the global warming that occurred during the last century should be solar induced.”

3. Pre-SUV warming. Another new temperature reconstruction for the past 2,000 years indicates that globally averaged temperature 1,000 years ago was about 0.3 degrees Celsius warmer than the current temperature. Since that climatic "heat wave" obviously wasn’t caused by coal-fired power plants and SUVs, the current temperature is quite within natural variability, deflating alarmists’ rash conclusions about the warming of the past 50 years.

4. A disciplined climate. Runaway global warming -- the alarmist fantasy in which a warmer global temperature causes climatic events that, in turn, cause more warming and so-on in a never-ending positive feedback loop -- was cornered by new data from researchers at the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH). The new research sheds light on the mechanism by which the atmosphere self-regulates.

5. A gnarly wipeout. Climate alarmists gleefully surfed a 2005 study that claimed greenhouse gas emissions would slow Atlantic Ocean circulation and cause a mini ice age in Europe. But an international team of researchers reported that the intensity of the Atlantic circulation may vary by as much as a factor of eight in a single year. The decrease in Atlantic circulation claimed in the 2005study falls well within this variation and so is likely part of a natural yearly trend, according to the new study.

6. A pollution solution. A new study reported that the solid particles suspended in the atmosphere (called “aerosols”) that make up “brown clouds” may actually contribute to warmer temperatures -- precisely the opposite effect heretofore claimed by global warming alarmists.

“These findings might seem to contradict the general notion of aerosol particles as cooling agents in the global climate system …,” concluded the researchers.

7. Lazy temperature? Researchers reported that the rate of manmade carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions was three times greater during 2000 to 2004 than during the 1990s. Since increasing atmospheric C02 levels allegedly cause global warming, the new study must mean that global temperatures are soaring even faster now than they did during the 1990s, right?

Wrong. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Climatic Data Center, ever-changing global temperatures are in no way keeping pace with ever-increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

8. Don’t plant that tree! Researchers reported that while tropical forests exert a cooling influence on global climate, forests in northern regions exert a significant warming influence on climate. Based on the researchers’ computer modeling, forests above 20 degrees latitude in the Northern Hemisphere -- that is, north of the line of latitude running through Southern Mexico, Saharan Africa, central India and the southernmost Chinese Island of Hainan -- will warm surface temperatures in those regions by an estimated 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100.

9. The Tropical Arctic. Dutch researchers reported that during a period of intense global warming 55 million years ago -- when the Arctic Ocean was as warm as 73 degrees Fahrenheit -- there was a tremendous release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But which came first, the warming or the greenhouse gases?
It was the warming, according to the researchers.

10. Much ado about nothing. In a report to Congress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency revealed greenhouse gas regulation to be quite the fool’s errand. In estimating the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases 90 years from now under both a scenario where no action is taken to reduce manmade emissions and a scenario where maximum regulation is implemented, the estimated difference in average global temperature between the two scenarios is 0.17 degrees Centigrade.

For reference purposes, the estimated total increase in average global temperature for the 20th century was about 0.50 degrees Celsius.

That’s what researchers have reported this year. And let’s not forget the spanking a British high judge gave Al Gore’s movie for all its scientific inaccuracies and the thrashing non-alarmist climate scientists gave to alarmist climate scientists in a debate sponsored by the New York debating society Intelligence Squared.

Al Gore and the alarmist mob claim the debate about the science of global warming is “over.” Given the developments of 2007, it’s easy to see why they would want it that way.

The New York Times editorializes Sunday about its fellow major periodical Time Magazine:

A few months ago, an Indonesian court ordered Time magazine to pay the former dictator a judgment now valued at about $111 million in a libel case. The verdict, which Time is challenging, should not be allowed to stand.

Suharto’s case — which would be laughable if it were not so serious — concerns a May 1999 cover story in Time’s Asian edition, reporting that he and his family had amassed a fortune of about $15 billion, including $9 billion in an Austrian bank account. Two lower courts dismissed the suit, including the central Jakarta district court which found the article, titled “Suharto Inc.,” to be balanced, responsibly reported and in the public interest.

After Suharto pressed his complaint, arguing that the story portrayed him negatively as a greedy person, a Supreme Court panel concluded that Time had defamed the former strongman….

The court’s decision is a threat to a free press. It mocks the reform efforts of Indonesia’s democratically elected government. It undermines the country’s struggle to get beyond Suharto’s corrupt legacy. We hope the panel [in Indonesia] that hears Time’s appeal will see Suharto’s suit for what it really is — the last grasp for vindication by an autocrat with no legitimate case to argue.

The 1999 Time article is here.

The NYT’s doesn’t consider the wider implications of foreign libel judgments against Americans.

In the case of New Yorker Rachel Ehrenfeld, 23 copies of her book ordered on the Internet in England subjected her to a libel judgment there although she’s a US resident. As I discussed here, US state laws are uneven in protecting Americans from such judgments and need to be strengthened, and a federal protection is needed against frivolous foreign suits. Such suits are a growing business in England.

Ehrenfeld’s assets are in the US, though she doesn’t have much. What about Americans or American companies that have assets in other countries?

Time Magazine, with a small circulation in Indonesia, may not have much in the way of assets in Indonesia itself, but it has considerable assets in the US and elsewhere in the world. Other US multinationals also have large assets abroad. Suharto may try to go after Time’s assets in the US, or in another country with easier collection laws or more friendly to his BS.

If the NYT’s wants to help preserve US freedom of speech, and protect Americans and US companies from libel judgment abuses, the NYT’s should be heavily editorializing for the New York legislature to mend its law, for Congress to strengthen federal protections, and for, say, the UN to vote to only allow libel suits from one country’s citizens against another’s in the defendant’s country of residence. Since the NYT’s thinks so highly of the vague Geneva Conventions, above US law, that editorial course should be a natural. Or maybe not, because then the NYT’s would have to recognize what a refuge for scoundrals is the UN, and that the US is among the very few with any sense of decency or effort to live up to international law.

Or, maybe the NYT’s prefers to wait until it is the target, letting others suffer in the meantime.

Rachel Ehrenfeld doesn’t have the resources of Time or the New York Times, and cannot afford to wait for justice. Contributions to aid her defense can be sent here.

Rachel Ehrenfeld just emailed me her reaction:

Americans who write and publish in the U.S. should be sued for libel under U.S. Laws, especially since the U.S. Is the only country in the world to guarantee free speech in its Constitution. The legislator in every state as well as Congress should pass laws to guarantee freedom of the press. Failing to so, already opened the door to those wishing to curtail the U.S. press and media willingness and ability to freely investigate and report on matters important to our survival as a free nation.

Regarding the Indonesian “judgment” against Time, I find the NYT editorial naïve, at best. Indonesia has one of the most corrupt legal systems in the world. Millions of dollars in hard earned U.S. taxpayer money were spent on Indonesian “reforms.” This judgment illustrates another U.S. success in “democratization.”

Both through shoddy products and overpriced ones that may nudge out more valuable defense spending, earmarks place our troops and our national security at risk.

Murtha and other congressmen and senators are damaging more than our troops and national security. They are also damaging the underpinnings and public support for charitable endeavors.

Today’s Washington Post runs a front-pager on Congressman John Murtha’s favorite charity, his reelection via earmarks to his district, “Millions in Earmarks Purchase Little of Use.” The focus is The National Defense Center for Environmental Excellence, in Murtha’s Johnstown, PA, affiliated with Murtha’s other creation Concurrent Technologies. Read the article for details, and read the Wall Street Journal’s more detailed expose, “MURTHA INC.: How Lawmaker Rebuilt
Hometown on Earmarks.” Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters also has a useful summary of Murtha’s earmark history.

This is most blatant by Murtha but also commonplace throughout defense spending and the rest of the federal budget. The Seattle Times reports how this abuse of earmarks has spread:

Mobilisa is one of a new breed of companies sustained by lawmakers handing them government contracts through line-item appropriations known as earmarks.

These companies make their sales pitch not to experts in places like the Pentagon but to lawmakers and their staff in the halls of Congress. The startups rely on dollars from taxpayers rather than from venture capitalists who demand a cut of profits. All the while, company executives usually give campaign donations to lawmakers….

That puzzles competitors, who describe the company's technology as dated and overpriced….

A very interesting part of the WP’s article is that Senator Charles Grassley, long a foe of charitable abuses, is trying to bring more attention to Murtha’s charity.

Concurrent's relationship with the Pentagon has come under scrutiny by lawmakers and the Pentagon's inspector general since the publication of articles by The Post. The most recent inquiry began this month by Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, who wants to know why Concurrent is a tax-exempt charity.

"It's fair to ask whether this company is serving a legitimate charitable purpose, and whether the taxpayers are getting a fair return on their investment," Grassley said in a statement….

Concurrent spokeswoman Mary Bevan said she had no comment about the center and referred a reporter to the Army. Bevan defended Concurrent's non-profit status, saying "we perform scientific research and development."

"We don't claim to be a charity," she said. "We're not the United Way."

Documents filed by Concurrent with the Internal Revenue Service show it is registered as a tax-exempt charitable organization.

"Something is very wrong here. Why is the government pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a contractor whose work it isn't using?" said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group in the District that has examined defense spending over the years.

The NDCEE came about as a result of federal environmental legislation in 1990 that mandated wide-ranging pollution prevention efforts by the government.

It’s a difficult matter for the government to investigate entities claiming charitable status, as many fear the brush may be too harsh or wide. On the other hand, the number of 501 (c) organizations is ballooning, partly due to the tax code’s overly broad definitions and lax enforcement, growing from 1-million such orgs in 1996 to almost 1.5 million in 2006. In 1990, there were only 200,000 charitable organizations registered with the IRS.

The Independent Sector, an association of major charities, testified last May to Congress, “Crucial to fulfilling our missions is our ability to demonstrate to our stakeholders…that we operate ethically and accountably.”

The same might be said for Congress.

San Francisco’s mandated levy on employers to fund a universal healthcare scheme has been struck down by federal district judge Jeffrey White. Such a fee upon employers violates the 1974 ERISA law which ensures employer choice as to whether and how to provide healthcare benefits.

San Diego Union-Tribune editorial writer Chris Reed has been sounding the tocsin non-stop, and virtually alone among California’s press, that California’s proposed $14+ billion scheme for universal healthcare would stumble over this same inconvenient fact: ERISA forbids such employer mandates. As Reed pointed out December 12:

After nearly a year of searching, I've yet to find a single legal decision from any court in America that even hints that proposals before the Legislature to force California employers to either provide health insurance or pay an in-lieu fee are legal. I've asked the staffs of the governor and the Assembly speaker, the biggest advocates of an employer mandate, to provide such an opinion. All I've gotten is pabulum about their "confidence" that their proposals would stand up in court -- hollow words that ignore the fact that the 1974 federal law known as ERISA has a 33-year winning streak in blocking local or state laws mandating that employers provide health coverage.

Instead of noting the incongruity of pursuing a plainly illegal law, the media have written hundreds of thousands of words about the health reform debate with scarcely any mention of ERISA at all. Even new court rulings with precise parallels to what's going on in California are ignored….

One thing I won't get my hopes up for, however, is for California's political journalists to ever admit their complicity in the massive waste of time we've witnessed over the past year. We've been having a gigantic struggle over ambitious health reform proposals, a battle played out on many fronts. But 99.9 percent of the time, reporters covering the fight couldn't be bothered to contemplate the vast, uncontradicted evidence suggesting the proposals were plainly illegal under federal law.

This isn't just lazy and irresponsible journalism. It's downright strange. [Emphasis added]

Indeed, strange, and that’s a polite way of saying the media has been more than lazy but complicit in trying to further universal healthcare schemes despite both legal facts and the many shortcomings of such schemes.

As Reed takes the Los Angeles Times to task:

The Times editorial is also notable for its silence on how the bill was put together. Normally LAT edit writers do a great job pounding away on secretive government, back-room deals, etc. But in 531 words, the edit didn't mention the bribes to unions to win over Assembly Democrats; the fact that no hearing was ever held on the federal law that is a gigantic obstacle to a state employer mandate; the fact that no hearing was ever held on the problems posed by the bill giving employers a huge incentive to drop coverage in favor of a state plan; etc.

I think the edit amounts to one more sign that the LAT believes anything is better than the status quo. It's not.

I wrote about California's healthcare scheme payola here.

The Massachusetts scheme of employer mandated fees has, so far, not stumbled over ERISA because the penalty is so small that no one has yet taken it to court. As Massachusetts’ plan expands, as such plans must in order to meet additional inconvenient facts of funding when medical costs rise and more individual and business freeloaders shift their responsibilities onto taxpayers, that court challenge will come.

Until then, look for Democrats and media to continue to further each’s agenda of government-run healthcare, the health care, fiscal, and legal inconvenient facts be damned.

UPDATE: ERISA Rules Again

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is relying upon ERISA and upon common-sense in ruling that employers can coordinate retiree benefits with Medicare, to reduce the burdensome costs of voluntary healthcare benefits provided by employers that are already provided by the government.

The New York Times reports:

The policy, set forth in a new regulation, allows employers to establish two classes of retirees, with more comprehensive benefits for those under 65 and more limited benefits — or none at all — for those older…. Naomi C. Earp, the commission’s chairwoman, said, “This rule will help employers continue to voluntarily provide and maintain these critically important health benefits.”… In general, the commission observed, employers are not required by federal law to provide health benefits to either active or retired workers….

The ruling is supported by large employers and by large unions (who have taken on more healthcare benefits burdens, for example, via the auto workers agreements).

James A. Klein, president of the American Benefits Council, a lobby for large employers, said: “The new rule is a victory for common sense and for retirees. Retiree health coverage has been declining for many years. Without this rule, many more retirees, especially early retirees, could find themselves without employer-sponsored coverage.”

Gerald M. Shea, assistant to the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., also saw merit in the new rule.

“Given the enormous cost pressures on employer-sponsored health benefits,” Mr. Shea said, “we support the flexibility reflected in the rule as a way to maximize our ability to maintain comprehensive coverage for active and retired workers.”

Of course, the nutroots are in alarm. See Memeorandum for a sample of their uninformed opinions. One (actually a part of one), by John Cole, however, does strike home. Cole calls it, “Privatize the Profits, Socialize the Costs”:

This is just another piece of evidence to me that we will be moving to single-payer in the next deade or so, simply because big business wants this (and would argue they need it) in order to survive. And we will end up dragging Red State and NRO along as they scream “socialized medicine” the whole way. At this point, it almost has a feel of inevitability about it.

Indeed, large companies and giant insurers have sought to shift their costs of healthcare onto taxpayers. In 1994, the largest insurers initially signed on to Hillarycare, to shift claims liabilities onto taxpayers while they kept the lucrative claims processing contracts, until smaller insurers and insurance brokers exposed the inanity of Hillarycare and the giant insurers reversed course. More recently, giant employers have been seeking, similarly, to shift their healthcare costs onto taxpayers. I wrote about it here in the Examiner and here.

Red Staters beware. Healthcare consumers beware. Taxpayers beware.

This is a direct example of how, once a government healthcare program is set up, employers and individuals will take advantage of it to shift their costs onto others, and leave patients at the mercy of government bureaucrats.

For those who have trouble making sense of the Republicans vying for the nomination to be president, here’s a one-sentence guide to the field and the doubts that are keeping the race open:

Romney: He’s quick and he’s slick, and gets along well with others, but is that enough to pick?

Guiliani: He’s tough and can play rough, but is he man enough for Hillary?

McCain: On national security he’s more than a pass, but for cozy deals with Dems he’s an ass.

Huckabee: For he who who stole Christmas with glib populism, it’s still tough to figure who’s against who.

Hunter: He’s repeatedly proven his balls, but can’t fill the halls.

Thompson: First rate actor hasn’t shown he can perform.

Last December I wrote “Why Chanukah and Christmas Go Together.”

The triumph of the spiritual over defilers, the centrality of morality over the lures of transitory excuses, appeals to us all.

This year, as I strolled through the mall, I started thinking about famous Christmas songs. After a little research (here and here), I discovered that most of our favorites came from Jews.

In America, a majority-Christian country, Jews have enjoyed freedoms we’d been denied elsewhere for almost two millenia. Jews have expressed their appreciation, among many other ways, in contributing the following loved Christmas songs:

White Christmas

Christmas Song

We Need A Little Christmas

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer

Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree

A Holly Jolly Christmas

The Christmas Waltz

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

Silver Bells

I’m Getting Nuttin’ For Christmas

Santa Baby

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Sleigh Ride

I’ll Be Home For Christmas

It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

There’s No Place Like Home For The Holidays

Do They Know It’s Christmas (Feed The World)

Thank you for sharing.

Letter to Sponsors, Staff and Committee Members
Via Email and Fax

I am writing on behalf of an embattled student, Aaron Haberer from Borough of Manhattan Community College, who received a failing grade for disputing his professor’s virulent political opinions against America and religious devotees. Aaron as well as numerous students and faculty have taken courage from the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) legislation in New York (S2300 / A04406), and wish to applaud your efforts to sponsor this vital legislation. I am focusing on Aaron’s story as a typical example of the flagrant abuses of student rights that increasingly characterizes much of the academic experience today. Although under analysis in the Higher Education Committee, ABOR has played a remarkable role acting as a de facto declaration of student academic rights affording moral support for freedom of political viewpoint and religious belief in the classroom, the right to disagree with a professor, to be graded fairly and to be exposed to a wide variety of scholarly perspectives rather than a one-sided political agenda.

In 2002, prominent conservative author David Horowitz drafted the Academic Bill of Rights for State University of New York Board of Trustees chairman, Thomas Egan who expressed enthusiasm for its adoption on SUNY campuses and promised to hand it over to his board to proceed. However the radical faculty unions that hold sway over the university systems of New York and tie the hands of administrators, fought against the measure. Accordingly, he reneged on his promise and repeated attempts to bring it up to the board for a fair hearing by Trustee Candace de Russy were stonewalled leaving no alternative other than to introduce it to the state legislature. Finally, Governor Spitzer terminated Trustee de Russy’s term, effective by the end of this year, leaving no representation in the SUNY system to fight for the concerns of students, faculty and parents regarding political indoctrination in the classroom.

In response to the hasty sweeping of this issue under the rug by both the state and city university systems, Brooklyn College professor Mitchell Langbert and I lobbied our state representatives and traveled to Albany to meet with Senator LaValle’s aide, John D’Agati, director of the Senate Higher Education Committee to introduce ABOR. We were met with reasonable consideration and concern from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike, rather than stonewalling and outright denials of the problem. It’s apparent that there is a deep-rooted problem in academia when our State Legislature in Albany advances the free and open exchange of ideas and opinions more so than do our college campuses.

When Aaron heard the news that ABOR legislation was under consideration in New York, he contacted me to speak to the College Republicans at BMCC. He described his ordeal of political and religious viewpoint discrimination in his Modern History class taught by Professor Gronowicz and showed me the one-sided booklist and assignments his professor handed out to impose an “eccentric” political agenda on the students. There were a few critics of ABOR present at my talks, but some of them ultimately sided with Aaron in his fight for student rights. He was empowered to fight not only for his own fair grades, but other student’s academic rights as well, after being bolstered by ABOR and knowing that powerful people were behind him.

Anthony Gronowicz leads quite a busy life above and beyond his teaching position as Associate Professor of Social Science at BMCC. He is also a leading radical figure in New York’s political circuit and an outspoken anti-war activist. He ran for Mayor of New York City in the 2005 General Election as the Green Party “eccentric candidate,” according to The Villager and had an earlier run for State Assembly in 1996. His policy positions entailed restoring the failed policies of free tuition and open enrollment to City University of New York, banning cars one day a week, rehabilitating prisoners, fining people in proportion to their income and raising federal income tax to 91% for the top income bracket, to name a few mentioned in an interview in The Villager. His activist career from 1965 to the present centered on the anti-war movement. He started out by chairing the Chelsea Committee to End the War in Vietnam, joining SDS marches on Washington, rallies for cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, protesting police shootings at City Hall Amadou Diallo rally, up to his recent speaking engagement at the Union Square Cindy Sheehan/Camp Casey anti-Iraq war protests. He is currently active in the political caucus of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the radical faculty union of CUNY. In the interview he said, “I am engaged in a crusade.” However, he has mistakenly brought his anti-American political crusade to the classrooms of BMCC.

Aaron, son of a Lutheran Pastor, is a devoted Christian himself, and a serious student of history aiming to teach on the high school level. Professor Gronowicz’s class was one of the requirements. But according to Aaron, instead of teaching a survey course on modern Western civilization, he spent an entire semester teaching secret societies and conspiracy theories as fact, and other topics that had no relation to the publicized course content. The course surveyed the Order of Skull and Bones, claiming that this Yale University fraternity boasting such past members as George W. Bush, John Kerry and other government figures, is a secret order that rules the world. Another student remarked that he hadn’t learned a thing because the entire course was an endless diatribe about Bush.

Aaron expressed his opinions during classroom discussions that these secret organizations and conspiracy theories are based upon fabrications and lies to justify calumny against our great country. Raising his voice to a shout, Gronowicz asserted that it’s not possible to find any explanations to justify America and it’s immoral actions. He singled out Aaron’s religious faith making such statements as, “it is impossible to be a free thinking educated person and believe in a God.” Aaron responded to the slanderous innuendo that all religious people are ignorant by offering good examples of highly educated God-fearing men and women, in order to argue against the crude mockery directed at him, but Gronowicz would shrug them off as exceptions to the rule. This professor’s classroom manner exhibited pure religious discrimination that violates academic standards as well as First Amendment rights.

Regarding 9/11 conspiracy theories, Professor Gronowicz stated that the destruction of the World Trade Towers was an inside job the Bush administration knew about way ahead of time because of the close family ties between Bush and the Bin Laden families. As proof that the government orchestrated 9/11, he argued that Tower Seven was not directly hit, but it came down nonetheless, by planned implosion because the government was trying to cover up secret documents concealed within its vaults. He also stated that first responders where not given the proper safety equipment. However Aaron was a union tradesman working as a first responder at ground zero and went about overturning the nutty professor’s false premises and errors one by one.

As Aaron argued his points in the classroom discussion, his saw his grades gradually plummet to an “F”. Another student who had a complaint about his grade, who never received lower than a B+ in the past, said that he received a C- in the course because Gronowicz lost his midterm, which hurt his GPA and forced him to repeat the class. Still other students voiced various complaints about this professor.

When Aaron realized the poor grades he was receiving were a direct result of expressing his firm belief in the righteousness of American government and his religious principles, he reported Gronowicz to another professor. This professor advised him about his academic rights and helped him file a formal complaint. Some of his fellow classmates likewise filed complaints when Aaron urged them to do so. Aaron fought for almost an entire semester and finally his grade was raised to one that he felt he deserved. Professor Gronowicz was summoned to appear before a peer review board. His classroom conduct was reviewed and as a result, he was demoted from a full time professor to an adjunct and given only one class assignment. Aaron feels that no student should have to go through the lengthy process he endured merely to get a fair grade that was based upon his course work, not upon political opinions or religious beliefs. ABOR added clout to his complaint and helped to dispel the notion that students are powerless and have no recourse.

This is only one of many recent cases that need to be exposed to New York’s legislators and the general public, and illustrates some examples of the infringements that ABOR specifically addresses. We appeal to you and the many state legislators of good conscience to continue to support this bill and take the appropriate action should it come to the floor for a vote in 2008 in order to take steps to prevent the growing plague of censorship, bullying, failing grades, and even lawsuits against those expressing political viewpoints or religious beliefs contrary to the campus orthodoxy.

My personal experience with No Child Left Behind is positive.

However, today’s New York Times says, “Democrats Make Bush School Act an Election Issue.”

Mrs. Clinton is not the only presidential candidate who has found attacking the act, President Bush’s signature education law, to be a crowd pleaser — all the Democrats have taken pokes. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico has said he wants to “scrap” the law. Senator Barack Obama has called for a “fundamental” overhaul. And John Edwards criticizes the law as emphasizing testing over teaching. “You don’t make a hog fatter by weighing it,” he said recently while campaigning in Iowa.

This was to be the year that Congress renewed the law that has reshaped the nation’s educational landscape by requiring public schools to bring every child to reading and math proficiency by 2014. But defections from both the right and the left killed the effort.

Now, as lawmakers say they will try again, the unceasing criticism of the law by Democratic presidential contenders and the teachers’ unions that are important to them promises to make the effort even more treacherous next year….

Seven years later, policy makers debate whether the law has raised student achievement, but polls show that it is unpopular — especially among teachers, who vote in disproportionate numbers in Democratic primary elections, and their unions, which provide Democrats with critical campaign support.

“There’s a grass-roots backlash against this law,” said Tad Devine, a strategist who worked for the past two Democratic presidential nominees. “And attacking it is a convenient way to communicate that you’re attacking President Bush.”

These political realities are making it extremely difficult to rebuild the bipartisan majorities that first approved the law during Mr. Bush’s first year in office, when he worked on the legislation with Mr. Miller and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who is now the chairman of the education committee….

“I don’t think you recognize the magnitude of the anger that’s out there,” said Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association. “My members are driving me, and if they think I’m not doing everything I can to change this law, they’ll take me to the woodshed.”

What is not acceptable to union members is unlikely to be acceptable to Democratic presidential candidates….

My son, Jason, is in second grade. His learning, across a range of subjects, is far beyond my own at his age. His teachers, and the curriculum, more demanding than I experienced, are excellent. My wife, German born and product of a lesser education, guides my son in his homework, and the clear track of requirements that flows from No Child Left Behind makes her path clear.

This is an example of how No Child Left Behind’s clear guidance of learning requirements, also, aids other parents – especially our many foreign born parents – who truly care about their children’s academic success. Parental involvement is the proven denominator of childrens’ academic progress. No Child Left Behind is, in my household, a proven product.

I appreciate that No Child Left Behind may have made teachers’ tasks more demanding, and even circumscribed somes’ tangents – nice to have or not. However, that is not a reason to throw out the child with the washwater.

Teachers unions better get more constructive if they really care about our childrens’ education more than their own ease.

P.S.: I hear the same support for NCLB and the consequent achievement of their children from all other parents at my son's school, across political and ethnic lines.

Elements of the anti-war Left are at it again, to slander our troops and mission. However, the way a former effort to slander our troops in Vietnam has now been exposed sets a course to derail the current effort at slander before it gains similar false credence.

Denis Keohane writes, in a review at American Thinker,

The left side of the web is busy spreading the word that next March the ideological descendent of the VVAW, the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) is planning another WSI dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan, thereby intending to smear another generation of over a million and a half Americans who have served to date in those wars and those who will serve.

The review is of To Set The Record Straight, the comprehensive study of John Kerry’s perfidy from 1971 to 2004, and the inside story of how the SwiftBoat Veterans and POW’s For Truth exposed Kerry’s exaggerations, lies and pernicious impact on our Vietnam troops and their mission.

I’ve already reviewed the book, ending on the happy note that such slanders as we Vietnam veterans suffered will not be permitted again. Denis Keohane tells us, especially bloggers, how to join in preventing another defamation of today’s brave generation of service members. Please read all of Denis Keohane's review. Bravo Denis.

Now I can't wait to see Charlie Wilson's War:

Socialite Joanne Herring wins 'War'
Wednesday, December 12th 2007, 4:00 AM

Former Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson and his ex-fiancee, Joanne Herring, won a second victory at Monday's L.A. premiere of "Charlie Wilson's War."

The ex-lovers - who supplied the mujahedeen with the guns they needed to chase the Russians out of Afghanistan - succeeded in detonating parts of the script that suggested Wilson and Herring had also seeded the events of 9/11.

Herring, played by Julia Roberts in the Mike Nichols film, tells us she "practically choked" when she read Aaron Sorkin's original screenplay. The movie ended with a shot of the Pentagon in flames, implying that Herring and Wilson (played by Tom Hanks) had abetted Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda crew.

"Can you ever predict a war?" she argues. "The shelf life of a Stinger missile is five years. There's no weapon we got them that can be used today."

Herring also didn't cotton to the way Sorkin had Roberts swearing, spouting evangelical screeds and engaging in martini-fueled romps with Hanks.

"I didn't like the cursing, the drinking, the blatant sex," says the 78-year-old thrice-married Houston socialite, philanthropist and former talk show host. "They turned me into a kooky, hypocritical tart."

After sharing the script with Wilson, she says, "We wept and wailed and gnashed our teeth." Then they brought in some legal muscle - Dick DeGuerin, the Houston attorney who represented Robert Durst, the deranged New York real estate heir who, as Herring notes, "killed his neighbor and chopped him in pieces. Dick got him off."

DeGuerin got the attention of Universal and the producers, who flew Wilson and Herring to meet the stars in Morocco, which was doubling as Afghanistan.

"Tom Hanks said to me, 'I've been in love with you for six months, give me a kiss!' I was delighted to. And Julia Roberts was so lovely.
"They still wouldn't let me on the set," she adds. "I said, 'What do you think I'm going to do - roll on the floor and foam at the mouth?'"

Assured that the script would be changed, Herring flew to the L.A. premiere with Houston pals, who included former Secretary of State James Baker. To everyone's great relief, she and Wilson liked what they saw on the screen.

Herring admitted that, just like in the movie, she wore slinky dresses to meet men in power.

"That's the only way anyone would listen to me," she laughs. "I'm a Christian, but even Christ liked to have a good time."

Fittingly at Christmastime a McClatchy wirereport reminds us why personal vitriol should not be the mode of partisan disagreement. Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont raises many a hackle for his strong opposition to many national security policies, but has also performed a major blessing in sticking up for literally saving the lives of our former allies – the Hmong of Laos.

McClatchy reports a “Bill would ease Hmong entry.”

Hmong and Vietnamese refugees who fought for the United States a generation ago will get another chance to join their countrymen in the San Joaquin Valley under a big spending bill now heading to the White House.

The bill relaxes an anti-terrorist rule that has kept Southeast Asian refugees stuck in overseas camps or unable to obtain a green card.

An unknown number have been denied entry for actions that U.S. officials once encouraged but which became defined as terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"Many of these people were our allies," Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont said in a statement. "They were there for us when we needed them, and we should not turn our backs when they need the safety of our shores."

Leahy's provision declares the Hmong, Vietnamese Montagnards and several other groups "shall not be considered to be a terrorist organization" on the basis of past actions. This will allow them to enter the United States or obtain a green card, even if they once took up arms.

Leahy chairs the Senate panel that funds the State Department, enabling him to insert the Hmong refugee provision into the nearly 3,500-page spending package. Approved by Congress, the $554.7 billion bill now awaits President Bush's signature….

Congress imposed stricter asylum and refugee rules in the Patriot Act and follow-up legislation. Rules already in place blocked prostitutes, drug abusers, felons and terrorists, among others, from entering the United States. The new laws expanded the definitions covering terrorists.

Notably, the new laws covered those who provide "material support" including money, transportation or help with communicating.

The law further specified that an action "unlawful under the laws of the place where it is committed" could be enough to keep a potential refugee out of the United States.

Without apparently meaning to, lawmakers now say, the revisions swept in populations otherwise friendly to the United States. The Bush administration in October waived the rules covering "material support," but not the rules covering armed fighters….

In May 2006, Leahy unsuccessfully tried to revise the anti-terrorism provisions as part of a larger immigration bill. The new language specifies more narrowly which refugee groups are protected.
In addition to the Hmong from Laos and the Montagnards from Vietnam, the new provision identifies groups including the Karen National Union and Arakan Liberation Party from Burma and anti-Castro groups from Cuba.

The New York Times on December 17 front-paged the plight of our Hmong allies, along with many photos. A few:

A recent visit to Yang's jungle hideout was the first to any camp of Secret War veterans by an American newspaper reporter. Family members broke down in tears and begged for help from the visitors. Photo: Tomas Van Houtryve for the International Herald Tribune

In September 2007, soldiers killed Mee Xiong, a 5-year-old boy. The boy's family wept over his grave.
Photo: Tomas Van Houtryve for the International Herald Tribune

Regardless of paronoia that the NYT’s may have been acting to further the omnibus monstrosity the Dem Congress has delivered, our thanks also goes out to the NYT’s. The lead and excerpts:

They call themselves America’s forgotten soldiers.

Four decades after the Central Intelligence Agency hired thousands of jungle warriors to fight Communists on the western fringes of the Vietnam War, men who say they are veterans of that covert operation are isolated, hungry and periodically hunted by a Laotian Communist government still mistrustful of the men who sided with America….

Their plight, though little known, has received more attention in recent years, as human rights groups have issued reports condemning the Laotian government for attacking Hmong who worked with the Americans….

Each of the five veterans in the camp has relatives in the United States; they say their fading dream is to be reunited with them. Mr. Yang’s hope is that Washington will “come back to help old soldiers like me to leave Laos and make it to America.”…

The State Department’s annual human rights report, released in March, cited increased efforts by security forces to eliminate scattered pockets of Hmong fighters. Pressure by the Laotian Army, the report said, “was intended to starve the remnants of insurgent families from their jungle dwellings.”

The Laotian government, perhaps wary of the effect the conflict might have on the country’s thriving tourism industry, denies that any clashes have occurred or that any C.I.A. veterans are still in hiding….

The group is indigent even by the standards of rural Indochina. Its members’ diet consists mainly of wild yams collected from the jungle, bamboo shoots and small animals hunted with bows and arrows. Occasionally they obtain rice from villagers willing to risk secretive association with them.

Surrounded by their worn-looking children and grandchildren, the five men appear older than their years and today bear little resemblance to the young Hmong tribesmen who collectively earned a reputation as capable fighters.

Colin Thompson, a C.I.A. officer in Laos from 1963 to 1966, remembers the Hmong recruits as rugged and loyal.

“There were some extraordinarily brave Hmong,” he said in a telephone interview from his home in Maryland. “They were a little tougher to beat back than were the other tribal groups. They stood their ground.”

If the fate of the omnibus bill to which this relief provision is attached results in non-enactment, this relief for our allies must be taken up by the administration and Congress as a priority.

I’ve repeatedly previously written about the sad fate of the Hmong here. I've repeatedly previously written about the sad fate of our Montagnard allies here.

Film maker Rebecca Sommer has had several columns at Huffington on their plight.

This is not a partisan issue, by any means. So, sincere thanks to Senator Leahy.

Now, let’s get it done, finally, after all these years and suffering.

Earlier this evening I posted the text below at the Campus Watch blog.

**********

(Updated Below)

As Anti-Racist Blog brought to my attention, the indispensable Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has translated the tape of an interview in which the president of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, Sari Nusseibeh, makes anti-Semitic remarks during a rant against the presence of Jews in any future Palestinian state. (See them, indented, below.)

Key to the interest of Campus Watch in this case is that Al-Quds has partnered with several American and Canadian universities to offer programs, classes, and research opportunities. The schools involved include the University of Michigan at Dearborn, Northeastern University, York University in Ontario, Brandeis, and George Washington University. Al-Quds also receives U.S. government support.

This afternoon, I sent the email below to the heads of each of these schools. If they reply, we'll make their remarks available; they may choose to speak through the media. Most important is that they not stand for such blatant anti-Semitism from the head of an institution that is supported by the schools they lead.

Dear President X,

I am the director of Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has released the translation of a November 30, 2007 interview in Arabic of the president of Al-Quds University, Sari Nusseibeh.

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1630.htm

In this interview, President Nusseibeh states:

The Israelis now living in the territories of the future Palestinian state should return to living within the borders of the state of Israel. No Jew in the world, now or in the future, as a result of this document, will have the right to return, to live, or to demand to live in Hebron, in East Jerusalem, or anywhere in the Palestinian state.

Given that X University has close relations with Al-Quds ( link to university web page ), I wondered if you had any public comment on the remarks of President Nusseibeh.

Thank you very much,

Winfield Myers
Director
Campus Watch

Update: James R. Russell, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard, sends the following comment for posting:

I, James Russell, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University, have read the statement by Sari Nusseibeh in his official capacity as President of Al Quds University: "No Jew in the world, now or in the future... will have the right... to live... in East Jerusalem" and so on. In response I declare that I refuse to teach or collaborate in any way professionally with any person having any connection whatsoever to Al Quds University, which must be regarded as an anti-Semitic and racialist entity. Furthermore I will oppose by every possible means, including prosecution under the laws of the United States, any association or cooperation of Harvard University with Al Quds. I urge all scholars and teachers of good will to join me.

My latest article, which appears today at FrontPage Magazine, examines University of Delaware political scientist Muqtedar Khan's four (4) reasons, given over a period of weeks, for his October 23 objection to appearing on a panel with Israel Defense Forces veteran Asaf Romirowsky.

In a move one would hope student groups nationwide might emulate, this past fall the College Republicans and College Democrats at the University of Delaware organized a panel discussion on 'Anti-Americanism in the Middle East.' Participants for the October 24 panel were to include two UD political scientists, Muqtedar Khan and Stuart Kaufman, and a graduate student.

But the panel was ideologically imbalanced. Kahn is a nonresident senior fellow at the left-of-center Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, and Kaufman a former member of Bill Clinton's National Security team. Both are on record as critics of American foreign policy in the region, and the graduate student was known to be sympathetic to their views.

So the students invited a fourth participant to offer a different perspective of the problem: Asaf Romirowsky, whose resume includes a stint at Campus Watch, a project of Daniel Pipes's Middle East Forum, which defends American interests in the Middle East. A resident of nearby Philadelphia, Romirowsky could drive easily to Newark, Delaware, thereby keeping the logistics of his participation simple. Like most Israeli males (he holds joint American/Israeli citizenship), Romirowsky served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Continue reading "Muqtedar Khan's Smoke Screen."

There is a growing imposition upon or bending by military and political leaders to supposed international law norms. Meanwhile, there is every evidence this isn’t the case for the West’s terrorist enemies.

Are we tying one hand behind our back? Need we? Can this increase the possibilities of the West losing in armed conflicts?

Last Tuesday, there was a debate in Israel between a leading Israeli proponent of the superior position of international law over national security concerns versus a leading American legal expert who disagrees. Caroline Glick’s summary of the debate follows, which she titles “The triumph of legal defeatism.”

The rest of Glick’s column reveals the previously secret Winograd Commission testimony of the extent to which such lawyerization of Israel’s actions in last year’s second Lebanon war may have contributed to Israel’s poor performance. Read it.

This debate is directly and dangerously applicable to the United States.

THE SAME day Mazuz's and Mandelblit's testimonies were released a debate took place at the Hebrew University where the legal establishment's embrace of the role of protector of enemy populations came under assault. The debate, sponsored by the Shasha Center for Strategic Studies, was titled "Can Democracy Overcome Terror?"

There, retired Supreme Court president Justice Aharon Barak, who founded this view, was pitted against Judge Richard Posner, from the US Court of Appeals in Chicago. It was a fair match. For the American legal community, Posner's intellectual standing is equal to Barak's in Israel.

Quoting extensively from his own judgments, Barak explained his view that the duty of a judge is to protect democracy. Barak defined this role as protecting human rights, justice and fairness.

In his view, there is a constant tension between human rights and a state's security considerations. The fact that judges in Israel are not elected insulates them from public sentiment, which Barak noted is nearly unanimous in times of terror and war. Barak asserted that no distinction should be made between human rights in wartime and human rights in peacetime. If restrictions are placed on human rights in wartime, he warned, they will serve as dangerous precedents in peacetime.

Moreover, Barak explained that judges must intervene in real time in executive and military decisions even when those decisions are reasonable. As defenders of human rights, judges, he claimed, are better situated than politicians and military commanders to distinguish right from wrong.

Posner disputed all of Barak's positions. He argued that judges have no special expertise to determine norms and values. In his words, "I try to avoid using words like justice, fairness and human rights. I don't like these words because they are empty and used as substitutes for grappling with hard realities." Given their ignorance of military affairs, judges should be modest in their judgments.

Posner also objected to Barak's description of democracy. Democracy, he explained, is simply the rule of the majority. And judges limit democracy by checking the actions of the elected legislative and executive branches in government. They, in turn, protect democracy by checking the actions and limiting the scope of judicial oversight. Unlimited judicial independence, Posner argued, is tantamount to the overthrow of democracy in favor of judicial tyranny.

Then too, Posner rejected Barak's distinction between security considerations and human rights. The most basic human right, he argued, is the right to security - which is a collective right. And since security is a human right, it cannot be weighed against other human rights.

Finally, Posner strongly disputed Barak's assertion that limitations of rights during wartime impact those rights in peacetime. Citing example after example from American history, Posner demonstrated that limitations placed on rights in times of war were abrogated when the wars ended and never served as peacetime precedents.

The Sydney Morning Herald (HT: Campus Watch) brings us stats from Britain’s defamation court:

There has also been a nice bit of growth in terrorism-related libel actions in London. Nowadays terrorism libel cases make up 13 per cent of the total number of reported claims, compared with 4 per cent in the previous year and 6 per cent in the year before that.

As in the Ehrenfeld case, terror enablers are increasingly taking advantage of British courts to intimidate publishers and authors. The Sydney Morning Herald, also reviews some of the attempts to do so in the U.S.

The news report ends on a hopeful note for sanity to prevail in England.

But some good can come of these litigious struggles. Last year the House of Lords decided in a case also involving claims about funding terrorism and brought by a Saudi businessman, Mohammed Jameel, against The Wall Street Journal, that if journalism was undertaken in a responsible, balanced and thorough manner it would win the day. The court said that standard should be applied in a practical and flexible manner.

Sooner of later we'll have a High Court that will adopt the same sort of thinking.

As I discussed in the above Ehrenfeld case post, the New York legislature and U.S. Congress, also, should make clear that “libel tourism” cases will not be allowed to silence Americans’ First Amendment freedoms.

The New York State Court of Appeals decided today that the New York State laws are not “coextensive with federal due process requirements,” which means the New York State courts are not as required as federal courts to protect rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment freedom of speech. For those inclined to read the full decision, it is here.

New York’s Sun summarizes the judgment, “New York Appeals Court Opens Door to 'Libel Tourism' “, but misses a few key points. First, the Sun’s report:

NEW YORK’s Highest court turned down a chance today to protect American authors from libel judgments awarded by foreign courts.

The case decided today, which pits a Saudi billionaire against a New York-based researcher, was a test of how New York's courts will respond to concerns that the First Amendment rights of American authors are being undermined by libel judgments imposed abroad, especially in Britain.

Libel law in Britain is far more plaintiff-friendly than America's libel law, and the discrepancy has given rise to a practice that critics describe as "libel tourism." In recent years, American authors and journalists have found themselves sued by non-British nationals in British courts over articles and books published in America.

Today the Court of Appeals in Albany said that New York law did not allow the researcher, Rachel Ehrenfeld, to seek a court order saying that a British judgment against her was unenforceable under the First Amendment. The Court said it did not have jurisdiction over the Saudi financier and that Ms. Ehrenfeld's suit to block the judgment must be dismissed.

The court's opinion, written by Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, an appointee of Governor Cuomo, largely sidesteps any of Ms. Ehrenfeld's First Amendment considerations.

Of "libel tourism," the decision states: "However pernicious the effect of this practice may be, our duty here is to determine whether defendant's New York contacts establish a proper basis for jurisdiction."

A lawyer in Boston who has written on the case, Harvey Silverglate, said: "The New York Court of Appeals could have done a better job of protecting our Constitutional rights than it did here with this rather technical opinion."

At issue was Ms. Ehrenfeld's 2003 book, "Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed — and How to Stop It," in which she accused a Saudi financier, Khalid bin Mahfouz, of backing organizations with alleged ties to terrorism. It is a charge that Mr. Mahfouz denies. Mr. Mahfouz sued Ms. Ehrenfeld and other researchers who made similar accusations against him in court in London. Ms. Ehrenfeld's work has appeared in many publications including The New York Sun.

Ms. Ehrenfeld never appeared before the British court, which in 2005 ordered her to pay 30,000 British pounds, print an apology, and keep her books out of the country. Today's ruling is in response to Ms. Ehrenfeld's countersuit, which sought a court order blocking enforcement of the judgment.

The Court of Appeals said that a New York court had no jurisdiction to hear her countersuit against Mr. bin Mahfouz because he has few ties to New York. A lawyer for Ms. Ehrenfeld had argued that Mr. bin Mahfouz's threats that he would collect on the British judgment were enough to give the court jurisdiction over Mr. Mahfouz. She claimed that her research and writing were hampered by the British court judgment hanging over her head.

The court's decision today does not preclude Ms. Ehrenfeld from raising those concerns again in the event that Mr. Mahfouz actually goes to court in New York to try to collect on the judgment before she could contest it.

A lawyer for Mr. Mahfouz, Timothy Finn of the firm Jones Day in Washington, declined to comment.

Last year, Britain's highest court, the House of Lords, made it significantly more difficult for journalists to be sued for libel. That decision came in a case against the Wall Street Journal Europe brought by another Saudi businessman.

What’s missing from the Sun’s account are four important points:

1. The NY law, unlike say California’s, is narrowly drawn, so residents have less protections from suits decided in other jurisdictions, especially ones that may be specious.

2. New York is a world center of publishing. All its publishers are, and some already have been, subject to “libel tourism” suits from Britain’s lax laws, which require the defendant to expensively prove all allegations rather than the plaintiff to prove libel as under U.S. law. These suits are a chill upon Americans’ free speech rights, as even a few copies of a U.S. publication sold over the Internet in Britain (as were just 23 copies of Ehrenfeld’s book) opens U.S. publishers to “libel tourism” suits from Britain.

3. New York’s legislature should immediately correct its statute, to conform to the U.S. Constitution. NY publishers and others should contact Governor Spitzer, their legislative reps, and also U.S. Senators Schumer and Clinton to bring their influence to bear.

4. Rachel Ehrenfeld, meanwhile, has seen her publishing access squeezed by fear of this suit, and lost considerable opportunities to earn her living, while Americans have been denied the opportunity to read her well-researched exposes of Arab financing of terror.

As the Sun article says, maybe, if Mahfouz seeks to collect on Britain’s court judgment in a New York court, Ehrenfeld might have grounds to very expensively defend herself again, and hope the New York courts will be more willing to defend the First Amendment. The current New York statute only allows defense against “long arm” suits if the out-of-state resident has business transactions, also, within New York. Hiring New York lawyers might be construed as having such business transactions.

But, by that time, a victim of “libel tourism”, like Ehrenfeld, is bled dry, and probaly unable to defend themselves. Another victory for those who want to silence critics of Arab financing of terror.

New York’s law is, in effect, bleeding dry our First Amendment rights and protections.

New York publishers better get off their duffs and help.

The Associated Press reports,

The unanimous decision interpreting a New York law now goes to a federal court. There, author Rachel Ehrenfeld has sought to combat what her attorney argued was a chilling effect on free speech by the billionaire, Khalid Salim A. Bin Mahfouz. The Saudi businessman has sued more than two dozen times over writings on terrorism and those who fund it, including Ehrenfeld's 2003 book.

"The chill continues," said Ehrenfeld's attorney, Daniel Kornstein of Manhattan.

Kornstein said the businessman hasn't tried to collect on his judgment, which includes an apology and a halt on book sales. But he said the London court verdict is a threat to authors.

"That's the danger and the risk and the problem that we tried to stress," Kornstein said. "It creates a sword of Damocles that prohibits authors and publishers _ and readers can't read about it."

Indeed, the chill continues on our First Amendment free speech. It’s time that be stopped in its tracks.

Hot Air blog adds:

It seems to me that Congress will have to take the issue of libel tourism up and pass a law to protect American citizens from libel judgments of courts outside the US. Otherwise, our First Amendment rights are at the mercy of the most permissive courts.

Andrew McCarthy agrees:

Congress should enact law establishing a federal cause of action for this kind of intimidation — along the lines of the scheme Rachel complains of — but as to which we don't have to rely on state "long-arm" jurisdiction statutes to reach sophisticated Saudis who game the system by traveling to England to sue Americans but then claim Americans can't touch them in America. If our courts won't protect us from this kind of nonsense, our laws must — especially when the deprivation involved is something as fundamental as free speech.

Publishers Weekly notes:

Judy Platt, staff director for the AAP’s [Association of American Publishers] Freedom to Read committee, said the AAP was “deeply disappointed” by the ruling. The AAP, along with several other organizations and companies, had filed a friend of the court brief in support of Ehrenfeld. The Mahfouz case, Platt noted, is a primary explain of libel tourism in which people who feel they have been libeled in books published in the U.S. file suit in other countries with weak libel laws.

The AAP better get its members on the line to New York’s and Washington’s legislators who care about the First Amendment. Authors, and citizens, who care about the First Amendment better get on the line, too. This New York court judgment unleashes the intimidation dogs of terror financing upon us all.

Postscript:
A knowledgeable friend just wrote me saying the 14th Amendment applies the Bill of Rights to the states. I replied the NY court avoided the 1st Amendment issues by denying jurisdiction, a common ploy of judges to avoid hearing difficult cases. Where's judicial activism when it's needed. Instead we get judicial laziness.

California gave us a lesson today in how government-run healthcare really works: Payoffs by interest groups to politicians, to get benefits favors or mandates.

That’s one of the many reasons why government-run healthcare is not a panacea for either cost-savings or for better care. Government-run healthcare is a panacea for powerful interest groups to enrich themselves by not having to compete in the open market, based upon value delivered, but instead to more simply pay-off and pressure politicians to favor their product, benefit or compensation.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

As Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez sought the endorsement of two major labor unions for his plan to overhaul healthcare in the state, he added several provisions to the legislation sweetening the deal for union members, including millions of dollars for better benefits and worker training.

The changes came soon after the unions donated more than $1 million combined to an initiative sponsored by Nuñez that would extend numerous lawmakers' terms, including his own.

In the final version, unveiled only days before Monday's vote, the unions received three years of increases in state funding of health insurance for tens of thousands of workers who provide in-home care for the elderly, blind and disabled.

The legislation as approved gives unions unilateral authority to create and operate trust funds to provide employee healthcare, taking the power to negotiate away from the county agencies that employ the workers. The amendment was sought by the Service Employees International Union.

The director of the journalism program at San Diego’s Point Loma Nazarene University doesn’t make excuses for shoddy journalism.

“Citizen Journalism,” that’s what Dean Nelson calls “the new paparazzi of average citizens” with their cell phone cameras “to put whatever they see on a Web site for all the world to watch.” Nelson lumps them with “bloggers for the information that will help us understand our world and make informed decisions.”

Dean Nelson wonders if citizen journalists have “made the professional journalists obsolete?”

Although not taking potshots at citizen journalists, Nelson feels,

Not in my opinion….The reason we need journalists is for the crucial task of verification….But journalists aren’t always known for going that extra verification mile. We’ve been guilty of publishing or airing or posting things that we believed were true, or wanted to believe were true, or even hoped were true, and did it without getting multiple perspectives. We almost always get caught when we do that, usually by other members of the news media who try to verify what we reported, or by citizen journalists. Our credibility, which is our only commodity, suffers every time it happens…. Journalism is at a crossroads today. Traditional news sources such as newspapers, television and radio are bleeding readers, viewers and listeners. Some of that audience could be reclaimed, I believe, if those news sources strengthened the very thing that separates them from the citizen journalists and focused on verifiable facts.

Our major media, instead, has chosen the road of less verification.

Our MSM has set up instant news desks, usually operating fairly independently, to flash on their websites the latest “news,” even without adequate verification. This is bad enough, but in a warzone where vital American and world interests are at stake, our major media has gone a step beyond to employ untrustworthy or inadequately vetted locals, sometimes with their own agendas.

In an interview I conducted with war correspondent Joe Galloway, published in Editor & Publisher,

Media bureaus in Baghdad now operate largely through inexpensive Iraqi stringers. I asked Galloway how such Iraqis are vetted for reliability. Galloway said that in the case of Knight Ridder, the bureau chief is fluent in Arabic as her primary check.

That rather casual approach to vetting the locals hired by our MSM in Iraq was again recognized in this week’s New York Times article, how the Associated Press’ Bilal Hussein “Case Lays Bare the Media’s Reliance on Iraqi Journalists.”

“A person is usually recommended by another journalist and brought in for an interview, and you sit down and have a long discussion with that person,” said John Daniszewski, The Associated Press’s international editor. “Like any job applicant in the states, people go through a probationary period. They are given lessons, it’s like an apprenticeship relationship.”

Mr. Daniszewski added, “When you are working side by side, you get to know the person, and if the person seems unreliable, or if you ever see someone not completely honest with you, he is out the door.”

The reporters and editors said that they often had to filter out obvious sectarian biases from news copy, and, as a matter of policy, would not run statistics like death counts from the field without official confirmation from the military. But, these journalists emphasized, there is a big difference between bias seeping into news copy and insurgents infiltrating news organizations.

Of course, it’s difficult for the MSM to operate under Iraq’s conditions, as the NYT’s article stresses.

However, due to cheapness by our MSM to field professional journalists (see my E&P column above), due to sloth, and due to biases opposed to the U.S. in the Iraq war, our MSM has not only allowed but defended such locals who distort the news fed to Western audiences, harming morale and support for our mission.

Michelle Malkin has been following the case of the AP’s Bilal Hussein. Jim Hoft, at Gateway Pundit, summed up the seven false massacres the MSM reported in just the past year.

Meanwhile, although our military in Iraq has become better at rebutting false reports in the MSM, the military is bound by a convention that journalists should be, first verifying facts.

Consequently, the rebuttal is often slow in coming, and is either ignored by the MSM or shuttled to tiny type on the back pages, hardly adequate to reverse the false impressions created among readers by the sensationalistic headlines given the false reports from Iraqi stringers.

There is a fairly simple solution. Everyone knows that wars are brutal and that is particularly so in Iraq. It simply isn’t necessary for the MSM to rush into print with poorly founded and verified allegations of brutalities. It's tabloid journalism of the worst sort. The MSM should have higher standards and practices than the National Enquirer.

Not only has the MSM seriously damaged our war effort but it has also seriously damaged its own credibility. Our MSM should work more closely with our military to verify facts, instead of rushing to broadcast enemy propaganda.

If for no other reason than self-interest, if patriotism or professionalism aren’t enough reasons, the MSM must get its own house in order, or see itself continue to fade in audience and respectability.

Mark Tapscott shows us a photo of the 2007 Congress’ 15-inch thick “omnibus spending bill”, that’s 3500-pages, combining eleven regular appropriations bills in one, including burying over 9400 earmarks (that’s pork for the home folk or special interests, to help congressmen and senators get re-elected, paid for by taxpayers). And, our legislators are expected to vote on it within a day.

If any of our legislators can read that fast, it’ll be like the old joke about the Evelyn Wood’s speed-reading graduate asked what War and Peace is about. The reply: something about Russia.

In other words, what the heck are our congressmen and senators getting paid to do, aside from getting themselves re-elected without any responsibility for producing anything of value, not to mention care for our nation’s well-being.

In 1988, President Reagan stood before the entire Congress and called them on their similar shenanigan. Look at the photo. Reagan’s hand is spread about 8-inches to encompass the, what he called, “behemoth” sent to him at Christmas by the 1987 Congress.

(Photo: Reagan Presidential Library)

In other words, the Congress’ shenanigan in 2007 has doubled in size over 1987’s, which pretty well sums up the dimension of the deeper-and-deeper hole that Congress is digging us into.

FYI, below are Reagan’s words to the Congress at the 1988 State of the Union speech at which the above photo was taken.

Let’s hope President Bush does similar next month at his State of the Union speech to Congress. In the meantime, Bush better work-out in the weight room to gain the strength to lift the latest outrage.

ADDRESS BEFORE A JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS ON THE STATE OF THE UNION January 25, 1988 full text

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, I will say to you tonight what I have said before - and will continue to say: The budget process has broken down; it needs a drastic overhaul. With each ensuing year, the spectacle before the American people is the same as it was this Christmas - budget deadlines delayed or missed completely, monstrous continuing resolutions that pack hundreds of billions of dollars worth of spending into one bill - and a federal government on the brink of default.

I know I'm echoing what you here in the Congress have said because you suffered so directly - but let's recall that in seven years, of 91 appropriations bills scheduled to arrive on my desk by a certain date, only 10 made it on time. Last year, of the 13 appropriations bills due by October 1st, none of them made it. Instead, we had four continuing resolutions lasting 41 days, then 36 days, and two days, and three days, respectively. And then, along came these behemoths. This is the conference report - 1,053 page report weighing 14 pounds. Then this - a reconciliation bill six months late, that was 1,186 pages long, weighing 15 pounds; and the long-term continuing resolution - this one was two months late and it's 1,057 pages long, weighing 14 pounds. That was a total of 43 pounds of paper and ink. You had three hours - yes, three hours - to consider each, and it took 300 people at my Office of Management and Budget just to read the bill so the government wouldn't shut down. Congress shouldn't send another one of these. No and if you do, I will not sign it.

My latest article appeared Monday in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin and is titled "Presidential Candidates and the 'Forbidden Word.'" It's a report on a talk given last week in Philadelphia by Robert Spencer, the well-known expert on Islam and radicalism who runs Jihad Watch.

Here's the full text:

Presidential Candidates and the "Forbidden Word"

Whether from a desire to avoid being labeled as racist, from cowardice when confronted with the PR machine that is the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), or from slanted coverage in the mainstream media, presidential candidates of both parties take great pains to avoid commenting on jihad (Islamic holy war), even as they blame the West for terrorist acts committed against it, according to noted expert on Islam Robert Spencer.

Mr. Spencer, who runs the web site Jihad Watch and is author of seven books, most recently Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't, called jihad "the forbidden word" in the ongoing presidential campaign.

Speaking on Tuesday at a Center City luncheon sponsored by the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank headed by Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes, Mr. Spencer lamented that the majority of candidates in both parties go to great lengths to avoid naming America's enemies, lest by stating that a link exists between terrorism and Islam they find themselves pummeled for their frankness.

The dilemma, said Mr. Spencer, is that while any candidate would want to avoid being called a racist, anyone speaking the truth on this matter will most certainly find himself tarred with that term. When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney used the word "jihad" in a television campaign commercial, Saturday Night Live parodied it simply by inserting a laugh track into the otherwise unaltered tape, as if using the term "jihad" was self-evidently absurd. The Wall Street Journal attacked Romney in a news article for speaking the unspeakable.

Moreover, CAIR's media guide warns that some unnamed non-Muslim writers suggest the Quran teaches violence. Yet, said Mr. Spencer, none other than Osama bin Laden quoted Quranic verses that call for violence against non-Muslims in his latest video, as did on many occasions the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. "There are hundreds of passages in the Quran and the Hadiths [commentaries on the Quran] that call for violence," Mr. Spencer said, and refusing to speak of this historical fact puts the West "at a disadvantage in understanding the enemy in order to defeat them."

Although denial on this matter does presidential candidates no good, most of them act as if it does, Mr. Spencer argued. But to voluntarily refuse to examine the causes of the war is self-defeating, he said, adding that while Rudolph Giuliani and Romney are more willing to identity our enemies by name than other candidates, every candidate needs to face the problem more fully. Yet some voters, Mr. Spencer said, first adopt a policy toward terrorists and then ignore facts that contradict it. "No number of future terror attacks will shake these peoples' beliefs that Islam is a religion of peace," he said, adding that such Americans prefer to flock to candidates who won't address the real issues.

Stating that "cowardice plays a tremendous role" in the problem, Mr. Spencer said that the media share much of the blame for our silence in the face of the most dangerous threat of our time. He recounted the unwillingness of most American media to show the Danish cartoons of Mohammed that caused worldwide rioting among some Muslims when they appeared in a Danish newspaper in September, 2005. Mr. Spencer said that "essential to a free press and a free society is the right to offend and to be offended." But in the wake of the rioting, in newsrooms "the test became, could the Muslims in Denmark be offended?" When Western papers said they didn't want to offend Muslims by reprinting the cartoons, they proved themselves politically correct cowards, Mr. Spencer said.

A corollary of presidential candidates' care not to give offense is that they behave and speak as if terrorism was the fault of the West (America, Israel, and Europe) rather than actions by Muslims against the West. Candidates will recite a litany of Western sins—the CIA's overthrow of Mohammed Mosaddeq of Iran in 1953, America's support for Israel, or Abu Ghraib—as explanations for terrorist acts. The implication, Mr. Spencer said, was that, with the proper initiatives on the part of the West, "the problem will go away," as if it's "something we can fix." Such an approach fails to grasp that the problem stems from "ideological imperatives within Islam," Mr. Spencer added.

Those imperatives mean that, from Indonesia to America, there is a movement that appeals to peaceful Muslims to become exponents of "pure Islam" and calls on them to "rise up and wage war to subjugate unbelievers under Islam," Mr. Spencer said. While it's true that most Muslims are not involved with this movement, it's also true that "they're not objecting to it, either."

Mr. Spencer said that while there are indeed moderate Muslims, there is no moderate Islam, which is "not a sect or a school of jurisprudence," since every school of Islam teaches warfare and subjugation. There exists, he said, a "huge spread of beliefs within Islam, just as there is with Jews and Christians. The Islamic world is not hermetically sealed against Western influence."

But Mr. Spencer warned against wishing for a widespread "Reformation" in Islam modeled on what the Christian West experienced in the sixteenth century under the leadership of Martin Luther and others. A rallying cry of that movement was a return to what the reformers believed was a purer, more ancient form of Christianity. Yet in Islam, that has already happened under the leadership of the eighteenth century writer Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, the founder of the Wahhabi sect of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. The severity of this strain rests on reliance on the earliest works of Islam, and yet, Mr. Spencer said, the ancient works of Islam are more violent than later works, which Wahhabis, following the movement's founder, regard as mere "accretions."

Mr. Spencer closed with a few policy prescriptions. He said that the U.S. government should undertake a new "Manhattan Project" to find alternative energy sources by putting the best brains in the nation to work on the problem. He also argued some of America's massive foreign aid budget is misspent, saying that in particular we should tie aid to Egypt and Pakistan to their willingness to work against the jihadists in their countries. Otherwise, Mr. Spencer said, "we're financing our own destruction."

Winfield Myers is director of Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

For those who like to believe there’s a free lunch, the table at Massachusetts’ universal health care scheme is being pared.

For those states, like California considering a similar scheme the politicians say will cost $14 billion, on top of an already $14-$18 billion budget deficit, better look again.

The Boston Globe reports on Massachusetts’ changes for 2008: “The changes will probably cut payments to doctors and hospitals, reduce choices for patients, and possibly increase how much patients have to pay.”

Costs of the Massachusetts universal scheme are, also, running 31% over expectations. In California terms, that could be an extra $4.3 billion.

In addition,

The connector postponed until February a decision on the most controversial step that would save the state money: increasing copayments and other out-of-pocket costs for tens of thousands of patients with an income above the poverty level.
Commonwealth Care members currently pay much less than those with private insurance to visit a doctor, get prescription drugs, or get hospital care.

The Massachusetts universal health care scheme is fulfilling expectations, of those who saw it as a fiscal and, even worse, patient care disaster in the making.

As the New York Times reports, international donors pledged $1.8 billion more to the Palestinians then even the $5.6 billion they had hoped for.

“Without this support, without the payment of aid that will allow the Palestinian treasury to fulfill its role, we will be facing a total catastrophe in the West Bank and Gaza,” Mr. Abbas said.

Meanwhile, there’s little evidence the $7.4 billion will accomplish any more than the over $10 billion of aid the Palestinians have previously squandered and sequestered in Pal leaders’ Swiss bank accounts. As Khaled Abu Toameh wrote in the Jerusalem Post:

This money is mainly designed to keep Fatah in power and prevent Hamas from taking over the West Bank. And unless the PA changes its rhetoric and starts promoting real peace and coexistence with Israel, the millions of dollars are not going to create a new generation of moderate Palestinians.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair recognized this when he was reported in the Financial Times telling the donors’ conference:

"Having a state is not just a question of territory," Mr Blair insisted in an interview with the Financial Times. "It is about the nature of what happens inside the state . . . So the single most important thing I can do to help the Palestinians is tell them the truth. And the truth is that there will not be a [Palestinian] state unless the nature of that state is clear."…

Mr Blair was convinced that today's Paris conference marked the first move by the Palestinians to spell out how they will manage security: "[They] will produce a comprehensive reform and development plan. It is a credible programme."

However, there was no security program announced by the Palestinians, just plans for spending more on its bloated bureaucracy. Moreover, the Pal leadership has not even carried out its public and private ledges to negotiate mutual accomodations promised by Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and West Bank PA President Abbas.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has instructed Israeli negotiators to work on sealing an agreement with the Palestinians as quickly as possible, but is dismayed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has not passed down to his negotiating team the same pliable positions he has discussed with Olmert in private, a government official said Monday.

Apparently, Arab countries which have promised funds to the Palestinians have a better reality quotient than Western donors. As the New York Times’ report mentions:

Many countries do not fulfill pledges that they make at such conferences. Egypt and other Arab countries are known for pledging funds to the Palestinian Authority that they do not deliver.

In the face of reality, relatively few Western commentators are willing to expose the emperor’s new clothes. One is Daniel Pipes, of the Middle East Forum, who notes:

A topsy-turvy understanding of war economics has prevailed in Israel since the Oslo negotiations began in 1993. Rather than deprive their Palestinian enemies of resources, Israelis have been following Shimon Peres's mystical musings, and especially his 1993 tome, The New Middle East, to empower them economically. As I wrote in 2001, this "is tantamount to sending the enemy resources while fighting is still under way - not a hugely bright idea."

Rather than further funding Palestinian bellicosity, Western states, starting with Israel, should cut off all funds to the Palestinian Authority.

Pipes steers us to a study by the respected media truth-tank Camera. Camera points out the close correlation of international aid to the Palestinians with increases in their terrorist activities, as shown in this graph:

Statistics on Palestinian homicides and foreign aid to Gaza and the West Bank reveal that as aid increased to the Palestinian government, so too did the numbers of people (both Israeli and Palestinian) killed by Palestinian militants. At the same time there was an inverse correlation between an increase in foreign aid and Palestinian economic growth.

Camera doesn’t leap from correlation to cause-and-effect, but does point out that at least there’s a caution there which should be recognized, and not swept away by wishful self-delusions:

These statistics do not mean that foreign aid causes violence; but they do raise questions about the effectiveness of using foreign donations to promote moderation and combat terrorism…. The past correlation between increased aid and increased violence during the previous Intifada, and research questioning commonly held beliefs about the roots of terrorism and radicalism, demand more discussion in the media.

AND, one should add, among Western politicians, seemingly more interested in again trying to buy off sworn terrorists than in squeezing them out of the power and influence they gain from aid infusions.

The AP reports that, “The government is promising $45 trillion more than it can deliver on Social Security, Medicare and other benefit programs.”

The $45.1 trillion shortfall has increased by nearly $1 trillion in just one year, according to the administration's "Financial Report of the United States Government" for 2006. And, it's up 67.8 percent in just the past four years. In 2003, the shortfall between promised benefits and revenue sources over a 75-year period was put at $26.9 trillion.

The shortfall includes Social Security and Medicare in addition to Railroad Retirement and the Black Lung program.

Total estimated fiscal 2007 federal receipts are about $2.4 trillion, including about $.6 trillion from Social Security and medicare payroll taxes. Total estimated 2007 federal outlays are about $2.8 trillion, including almost $1 trillion for Social Security and Medicare.

Now, consider that you want to build a house that costs $45 trillion, and to get an interest only 6% loan, which means $2.7 trillion a year of interest-only payments, and your total income is $2.4 trillion.

Fat chance! Even with an expectation of increasing receipts of 5% a year, say from productivity-enhancing low tax rates and a booming economy, it would still be fat chance you’d get the loan.

I know this is oversimplified, but it brings into sharp focus the fiscal absurdity of the entitlement mess were already in and its deepening dimensions.

So-called solutions bandied about call for yet higher income, Social security and Medicare taxes. Yet, higher taxes reduce productivity, reduce economic growth, and lead to less federal receipts than otherwise.

But, some say, the rich can afford it. However, the top 10% of earners already pay 70% of income taxes. Further, they’ve paid a proportionately much higher contribution toward Social Security and Medicare taxes, for significantly much lower proportional benefits. (See here for some stats.) We’d have to impose exproprietory rates that would make the U.S. the reduced equal of Zimbabwe.

Now, let’s say you propose to add $2.6 trillion to that unaffordable debt, by legalizing 12-million illegal immigrants. No wonder eyeballs roll at the proponents of further debts we can’t afford. It’s not racism to feed your own before throwing open the doors to your table.

Yet, in the face of the obvious, recognizable by any responsible citizen, that the entitlements must be trimmed, congressmen and senators are hailed as brave for suggesting further delaying commissions. They should be commissioned to a nut house, and any who believe their empty rhetoric should join them.

It’s not a pretty prospect, particularly for those entering their retirement years, but boomers better adjust or bust, or bust their children and grandchildren. This will be the real measure of just how selfish and self-aggrandizing is the boomer generation, as if that needed further evidence.

The Business and Media Institute’s holiday gift is to smash the balls of fuzz on media’s tree of economic myths.

The mission of BMI is to audit the media’s coverage of the free enterprise system. It is our goal to bring balance to economic reporting and to promote fair portrayal of the business community in the media.

Here’s a taste, but you have to read all the myths’ arguments and rebuttals to get the whole truth. Indeed, you should carry copies of the whole BMI article around in your pocket to hand out to economic illiterates you meet. (Actually, you’d better carry a large brief-case full, or you’ll run out of article copies in minutes.)

The Media’s Top 10 Economic Myths of 2007
Compiled by the Business & Media Institute

10. Airlines are solely to blame for the unfriendly skies.
Media myth: Blame the airlines for all those flight delays; never mind the obsolete government-run agency creating the gridlock.

TRUTH: According to the Boyd Group: “The main cause of delays is the decades-long inability of the FAA to construct an ATC system that meets the demands of the air transportation system.

9. Consumer spending is the be-all, end-all of the economy.
Media myth: Without excessive consumer spending – especially at Christmastime – the U.S. economy will collapse.

TRUTH: “I think it is more valuable to look at what is happening to producers investing. If they are investing what consumers are saving, then the economy will be expanding, not contracting,”

8. The stock market is trouble, whether it goes up or down.
Media myth: One day the stock market can’t sustain growth; the next, we’re just one drop away from another crash.

TRUTH: “Stocks don’t look as overpriced today as they did in 1987. Today, the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index trade only a little above the historical average of 16 times profits for the past 12 months. In 1987, the S&P 500 was at more than 20 times profits.”

7. Anyone who ‘denies’ global warming shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Media myth: Global warming could cause a ‘century of fires,’ just as it has created allergies and ended winter fashion. If we don’t do something now (i.e. spend hundreds of billions of dollars), it’s only going to get worse.

TRUTH: Dissent against the “consensus” on global warming gets the cold shoulder from the media, but there is disagreement.

6. You’d better not eat/drink that!
Media myth: Forget the right to eat as you please; the nanny-state knows better.

TRUTH: Moderation is the answer and personal choice is better than government intervention. A pro-regulation slant came as no surprise from the same media that constantly repeat claims from the left-wing Center for Science in the Public Interest.

5. Most Americans are losing their homes.
Media myth: Americans everywhere are losing their homes to foreclosure, and the housing bust is going to ruin the economy.

TRUTH: The foreclosure figures most stories used came from RealtyTrac, a source that counts each filing in the foreclosure process. One house has to go through several steps in the process, so counting each one as a separate foreclosure is inaccurate. Rick Sharga, the organization’s president, said it is misleading to call the number total foreclosures – which is what the media kept doing.

Since January 2000, the national average home price has risen by 80.45 percent, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index of home prices. But television news viewers were unlikely to hear that figure, because most reporters were focused on the 4.5-percent price decline since the third quarter of 2006. Declines from record highs should be put in perspective.

4. “Going Green” is good for America and business.
Media myth: Businesses are much better off if they go green, and that’s what people really want anyway.

TRUTH: "many major initiatives simply aren’t money-savers. They come with daunting price tags that undercut the conviction that environmental salvation can be had on the cheap,” wrote BusinessWeek.

3. Lenders are responsible for everyone’s debts.
Media myth: Drowning in red ink isn’t your fault; blame the guy who loaned you the money.

TRUTH: While some lenders may have been “unscrupulous,” no one holds a gun to someone’s head and forces him or her to take out a mortgage with a variable rate or without a down payment.

2. Free health care would be great!
Media myth: To save our children and the 47 million uninsured Americans, and to keep up with the rest of the world, we must have government-run health care.

TRUTH: Accounting for all those factors, one prominent study places the total for the long-term uninsured as low as 8.2 million – a very different reality than the media and national health care advocates claim.

In addition to faulty numbers, health care coverage suffered from a lack of numbers when it came to costs. The type of health care Clinton and Moore were pushing for is hardly “free.” USA Today’s Richard Wolf provided some refreshing honesty in his June 22 piece, reporting the drastic difference in tax rates for countries that provide “free” health care.

“In France and Britain, the tax burden is 42% and 27% respectively, as opposed to 12% in the USA, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,” he wrote.

1. The U.S. Economy is in recession.
Media myth: The U.S. economy is nearly in, or is in, a recession.

TRUTH: The U.S. economy is NOT in a recession and has experienced strong growth.

Don Surber has