Free kibbles

EDUCATION:

Everything government touches is in an unprecedented race to the bottom.

"New York educators banned references to 'dinosaurs,' 'birthdays,' 'Halloween' and dozens of other topics on city-issued tests. That is because they fear such topics 'could evoke unpleasant emotions in the students.' Dinosaurs, for example, call to mind evolution, which might upset fundamentalists; birthdays are not celebrated by Jehovah's Witnesses; and Halloween suggests paganism. Homes with swimming pools and home computers are also unmentionables — because of economic sensitivities. The city asks test companies to exclude 'creatures from outer space' as well — for unspecified reasons."

You can't make this stuff up.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

2011 pretty much the same as 1974. Around here we remember 1974 as the year tornadoes pretty much destroyed Xenia.

New EPA rule, if implemented, would shut down pretty much all coal power plants in the US, taking away 44.9% of our power. The rule...

"… will require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits 800 to 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt."

This will never be implemented. Only a few ruling class individuals will gain from this. All the rest, and everybody else in America, will lose. Our rulers aren't stupid. They don't act to harm themselves. Some bureaucrat, and maybe Obama, will be slapped down hard over this.

POLICE STATE:

Here's a good reminder that government is inherently lawless institution: the FBI taught counter-terrorism agents that they did not have to obey the law.

"politkal writes

"According to the FBI's internal inquiry on counterterrorism training, the FBI taught agents that the Bureau 'has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedoms of others;' that agents should 'never attempt to shake hands with an Asian;' that Arabs were 'prone to outbursts' of a 'Jekyll & Hyde' nature."

Even better: "That review, now complete, did not result in a single disciplinary action for any instructor. Nor did it mandate the retraining of any FBI agent exposed to what the Bureau concedes was inappropriate material. Nor did it look at any intelligence reports that might have been influenced by the training.""

I bet many Americans support this. We have nobody to blame for his but ourselves.

The EU proposes a minimum sentence of two years for hacking.

I've often claimed that judges rule in their personal best interests, and I really like this examination of their priorities. What it's lacking is mention of the political pressure on justices. I agree that Supreme Court justices decide cases in their own interest and their own interest in generally in expanding the power of government as long as doing so doesn't undermine the legitimacy of the government based on the current political climate because that would threaten their power.

"The Court knows that it risks its reputation and hence its ability to sanction government growth generally if it upholds this law."

It's a good bet that, given the political climate, failing to overturn the individual mandate in Obamacare would threaten their legitimacy, so the justices will probably overturn it, 5-4. That's probably why they scheduled the Wednesday hearing to see how much of Obamcare they could salvage after overturning the individual mandate.

WAR:

This North American command thing is another step toward one world government. The point about 'defence' instead of 'defense' is spot on, as the British say.

MISC:

These sound like six pretty good books all related to the primal lifestyle.

Open source designs for Star Trek inspired tri-corders.

The city of Munich has saved 4 million euros by dumping Microsoft and switching to Linux.