Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

We have long been accustomed to believe that science is absolutely truthful. In little more than half a century, that is changed. As everyone knows, a hacker broke into the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and distributed thousands of e-mails indicating blatant attempts by the Global Warming professors to cook the books. There’s more. We learn that 5,428 Global Warming articles in Wikipedia have been rewritten. (Click on Lawrence Solomon; read his article, “ How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles ," published originally in the Financial Post of December 19, 2009.) That’s not all. Another 500 articles were deleted, reports Solomon. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) activists were involved. There was a Medieval Warm Period around 1000 AD to 1400 AD, which was warmer than today. It was not caused by humans. The existence of that Medieval Warm Period is fatal to the Global Warming activists, such that they have been indu...

A splendidly written and researched story in Sunday’s Harford Courant by Josh Kovner and Jon Lender , demonstrates that the state’s attorney’s general office has become a money operation more interested in cash than justice. The story calls into question a case prosecuted by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, sometimes mentioned in press reports as a desirable Democratic candidate for governor or U.S. senator. The owners of a Brookfield quarry, Rock Acquisition Limited Partnership, convinced their property had been undervalued by two appraisers, the last hired by Blumenthal, took their case to court and were fortunate enough to have the issue decided by Superior Court Judge Barbara J. Sheedy, who was attentive to the facts of the case. Here are the facts: 1) The quarry owners questioned an appraisal of their property, taken by the state to allow the construction of a Route 7 highway bypass near Brookfield that opened last month. The owners thought their property was ...

Al Quada, Non-partisan in American Election Al Qaeda is trying its best this Halloween to be non-partisan, according to a recent Reuters report . “’O God, humiliate Bush and his party, O Lord of the Worlds, degrade and defy him,’ Abu Yahya al-Libi said at the end of sermon marking the Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr, in a video posted on the Internet. “Libi, a top al Qaeda commander believed to be living in Afghanistan or Pakistan, called for God's wrath to be brought against Bush equating him with past tyrants in history.” For months, militants on al Qaeda-linked websites have been debating the significance of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama or Republican John McCain, but the politically savvy leadership has been careful not to be as partisan as, say, CNN. Why the reticence? "To support a particular candidate,” wrote Rita Katz, the director of SITE Intelligent Group, a terrorist monitor, “would debase al-Qaeda's long-standing argument that the United States gov...

Wednesday, May 02, 2007 Testing, testing … Newspaper folk sometimes say their stories are the first rough draft of history. These thoughts are less than that; they are the first rough draft of the first rough draft of history . You’re only as good as the information you receive. Take George T_ … please! No, only kidding. Look, I’m the first to understand that people have to make a living. That’s good; that’s the American way. But really… George was the main spook. So, you’d think when you’re talking to the guy who has his finger on the red button – me -- you’d be a little more circumcised … sorry, that’s circumspect … in what you say. When you say “slam dunk” to someone like me, who is intimately familiar with sports, it means SLAM DUNK, NO PROBLEMO, DO IT! But, ya’know, T_ did have a point when he said the president didn’t make important decisions based only on partial, emotional responses. There was at the time, as I recall, a Noah’s flood of information out there, a good deal of i...

The "blanket bit" in this interview with Christopher Hitchens is hilarious and helps to explain why there will always be an England. Bitterly critical of the CIA, it is also a manual in how get yourself a file in the CIA, the FBI and whatever comgressional committee is charged with overseeing international sleuthery. Australian Broadcasting Corporation Broadcast: 11/09/2006 Reporter: Tony Jones Tony Jones speaks with the prolific writer and outspoken commentator Christopher Hitchens about the New York attacks and their implications. TONY JONES: Well just a year after September 11, the prolific writer and outspoken commentator Christopher Hitchens joined me on the roof of a building overlooking Ground Zero to talk about the New York attacks and their implications. Now, five years after the event that changed the world, we invited him to join us again - this time from our Washington studio. Christopher Hitchens thanks for being there. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Thanks for having me...

Hilliare Belloc’s advice to the rich – “Learn something about the internal combustion engine, and remember: Soon, you will die.” Caligula So, I have become a ghost, the nearest I shall ever be to a God again; for, in life, I was a God. Divinity, you know, is the highest form of politics. What is higher or nobler than a God? … But wait: Nobility has nothing to do with it, as if nobility and Godliness could ever share the same frame; a God is above that sort of thing … As a former Emperor – now, God and ghost – everything to me was permissible, and understandable. I comprehend by grasping my subject from the inside; nothing was alien to me. I am solid as earth now, though I know it does not seem so to you, because I know everything; I am in everything, and everything is in me. That is how I know; through a process of identity and self revelation. I become the thing I want to know – say, a tree, or a young boy, or a virgin – and then, at will, I revert to Godliness. You, on the other ha...

"What we did during the last 30 days was a tribute to our ancestors. I know they are looking at us from heaven and they are applauding." -- Viktor Yushchenko Several years ago, I was contacted by a Ukrainian in New Britain, Connecticut who wanted to send me a film on the 1932-33 famine in that country. He asked me to view the film and let him know if I could think of any reason why it should not be shown in the United States. The film, " Harvest of Despair ," had been widely shown in Canada. That was my first exposure to the greatest man made disaster ever recorded, and the first time in history that famine on such a scale was used as an instrument of war and oppression. I was stunned by "Harvest of Despair." The film contained footage of both the famine in 1932-33 and an earlier famine that had been stopped in its tracks by Lenin, who had imported food into the stricken areas. The 32-33 famine -- the Ukrainians call it the Holodomor, roughly translated...