Sometimes I wander through the fever swamps of the magazine of "holistic" protesters and tottering old Stalinists, <i>The Nation</i>: a magazine that is to <i>The New Republic</i> as Pat Buchanan's <i>American Conservative</I> is to <i>National Review</I>.

In other words, it's filled with the left wing equivalent of John Birchers, paranoid true believers who see politics as war by other means and Jewish fascist Christian fundamentalist financier-megachurch-preachers as the true force behind every right wing proposal, "right wing" proposal (read: something an espousing Christian or a corporation came up with), and "right wing deviationist" proposal (read: something from a liberal who doesn't read <i>The Nation</I>).

So you can see how surprised I was when I read such an illustrious magazine accusing Hillary Clinton - motto: "Three horsemen short of an apocalypse" - of <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/ehrenreich">being part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy</a>.

Now, first, shake off that weird feeling you just had, like that during the inevitable Family Get Together awkward silence after Crazy Uncle Joe talks about people watching him through the lightbulbs or Great Aunt Louise says the word "coloreds" to describe the majority of the world's population (and, specifically, "those uppity ones downtown"). Second, think about the fact that these people - devotees of The Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, Eschaton and the innumerable other sights of masturbatory BDS ventings - have a firm grasp upon the future of one of our two main political parties.

Jimmy Carter, perhaps the nation's worst President and acolyte of 1960's LBJ liberalism, infamously sat at Michael Moore's side during the 2004 DNC convention, and Markos Zunigas is a man to be mollified and kow-towed to by the Democrat candidates at The Yearly Kos.

We on the Right cast out our crazies. The Birchers were dismissed from conservative discourse in the fifties by the likes of WFB Jr. Those glossy eyed zealous reason-engineers fighting their continual last stand under the banner of Randianism were famously "read out." Our Michael Moore figure, Ann Coulter, is banished to the political equivalent of a corporation's Anchorage, Alaska office: fired from <i>National Review</I>, her increasingly outlandish books remaining unread Christmas presents from well meaning but politically apathetic or ignorant relatives. Talk of black helicopters, Blue Helmeted UN Stormtroopers, the NAFTA Superhighway, North American Union, or "the Amero" is a road straight to irrelevance on the right, one of the main reasons Ron Paul got so little of even the Republican vote.

It is high time for the Left to have the same cleansing. And they could, were it not for the conspirational style of their core beliefs, where disagreement for any reason is treated as sign of religious "psychosis" or being the stooge of the cabal <i>de jour</I> or Big Whatever.

We "global warming deniers" are dismissed as cranks when we point out the authoritarian tendencies in the environmentalist movement, and link them to our supposition that Climate Change is an all-encompassing, non falsifiable hypothesis being used to undermine both individual liberty and the liberal government that sustains it.

Why, then, do we keep reading things like <a href="http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6878">this</a>?

The synopsis of <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080107/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_lethal_injection">this case</a> goes as follows:

The state of Kentucky, like other states that use lethal injection, uses a three-drug system that recently has been questioned as to whether the condemned feel pain during the procedure.

The petitioners stipulate that the chance that such occurs makes the procedure unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment, and thus that the Supreme Court must remedy the situation.

The respondent, the Commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Corrections, of course says this is a load of bollocks.

Firstly, and of lesser import, is the question of standing. Do two inmates have legal standing to challenge a procedure that has not happened yet? Common law has always held that the act in question must have already occurred to be remediable. Thus a police abuse that lead to a citizen death is remediable not in appellate courts, but in criminal court (trying those involved in breaking a criminal code) or civil court (with certain relatives or former spouse of the deceased being able to cite a tort). Standing is not clear in this case, and typically in such instances the Supreme Court yields to lower courts, and federal courts should in general yield to state courts in such instance.

The second and most important question is one of venue: does the Supreme Court of the United States have jurisdiction of any sort? Certainly this falls outside of original jurisdiction and thus we refer to appellate jurisdiction. However, if the federal courts in general lack purview then, ipso facto, certiorari cannot be granted by the Supreme Court.

So thus the question falls down to: Does the ban on "cruel and unusual punishments" render this method of capital punishment illegal.

The answer is: obviously not, to any thinking person.

The Constitution allows for the death penalty twice, both in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, declaring that no person shall be deprived their life, liberty, or property without due process. Thus it was in the understanding of the Constitution's drafters, ratifiers, and constructors of future amendments that capital punishment was legal. By definition, there is no method of capital punishment guaranteed to be without pain in some, most, or all cases. And thus if there is a chance (or a certainty, for that matter) that pain occurs, it does not have any bearing on the legality of the procedure.

Like all aspects of the law, it is guided by tradition and custom. Indeed, in ancient Greek, the same word applied to both custom and to law: <i>nomos</i>. It was thus that the Constitution's drafters held drawing and quartering to be a tyrannical and barbaric practice, but death by gallows to be both legal but applicable to a wider swath of crime and criminals than in the present. Since we are to be a country of laws and not of men, where the wills of those with power - even a shifting Supreme Court majority - are not allowed to run free, then we are bound to the plain meaning given to this text by its authors, men who said what they meant and meant what they said, who spoke in precise language devoid of pretense and nuance (in other words, in dry legalese).

It is thus that we can conclude that capital punishment in this instance is purely a state matter, and like all law that is solely a matter for the several states, its judicial review properly ends at the state level. The Supreme Court has no jurisdiction and no right to meddle in the affairs of the State of Kentucky in this case, and only has the right to review in order to correct a lower federal court's meddling.

I've always said that 90% of the DNC platform is, in effect, conspiracy to commit felony. The government is only legally allowed to do specific things, and if it confiscates citizen's money to do illegal things then that is extortion, theft, and dealing with illicit funds.

Ignoring foreign policy, I'm going to look at what portions of Barack Obama's policy platforms would be illegal if "enacted".

"Guaranteed eligibility. No American will be turned away from any insurance plan because of illness or pre-existing conditions."

Such a regulation - which entails news sections of the US Criminial Code -  falls beyond the purview of the federal government, and is illegal.

"Comprehensive benefits. The benefit package will be similar to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), and cover all essential medical services, including preventive, maternity and mental health care."

To provide such would require a program that lacks Constitutional authorization, and is thus beyond the jurisdiction of the Federal government and illegal.

"Subsidies. Individuals who do not qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP but still need assistance will receive an income-related federal subsidy to buy into the new public plan or purchase a private health care plan."

Find the part of the Constitution that guarantees direct payments to individuals, and I will find you a new car.

"Quality and efficiency. Participating insurance companies will be required to collect and report data to ensure that standards for quality, health information technology and administration are being met."

Per the first quote, all insurance companies are ipso facto "participating". Once again, if you can find the portion of the Constitution that allows the federal government to lay claim to private company's records without warrant in the name of a matter neither civil nor criminal, I will recommend you to a rehab clinic.

<blockquote>National Health Insurance Exchange. Obama will create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals who wish to purchase private insurance. The Exchange will act as a watchdog group and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible. Insurers would have to issue every applicant a policy, and charge fair and stable premiums. The Exchange will require benefits comparable to those offered in the new public plan. Insurers would be required to justify an above-average premium increase. The Exchange would evaluate plans and provide information about differences between them.</blockquote>

Obama will create! We don't need no steekin Congresses! First of all, the idea of a government agency acting as a "watchdog group" would be dryly humorous if it wasn't mind numbingly Orwellian. What this says is, in simple terms, if one for reactionary reasons wants to opt out of the one size fits all Government health care plan, then one must sign up with a plan from companies ordered by the government to offer a one size fits all Government health care plan.

Brilliant.

<blockquote>Employer Contribution. Employers that do not offer or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees will be required to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of the national plan. Small employers that meet certain revenue thresholds will be exempt.</blockquote>

There was a day and age when, if one wanted the government to issue a new tax, one would have to pass a Constitutional amendment. Apparently that age died sometime between 1913 and now.

"Mandatory Coverage of Children. Obama will require that all children have health care coverage."

With his mighty Fist of Justice!

Also, Illegal, Illegal, Illegal.

"Flexibility for State Plans. Obama's plan allows states to continue innovating on health care reform."

But only if they obey illegal Federal dictates and only if they continue the long march towards our brilliant, happy-fun socialist future.

<blockquote>Transitional Jobs: Obama will create a transitional jobs program to place people with extreme difficulties getting and keeping good jobs into temporary, subsidized wage-paying jobs to gain necessary job skills before applying for unsubsidized jobs in the private and public sectors.</blockquote>

Translation: Obama has no grasp of the legal limits of his presidency, or of the Federal Government in general. Obama thinks that somewhere in the emanations of the penumbras of the Constitution lurks the clause of the section of the article that gives authority to Congress to create thousands of jobs for the lazy and stupid and pay them with taxpayer money.

"Barack Obama believes that workers should have the freedom to choose whether to join a union without harassment or intimidation from their employers. "

Barack Obama believes that the right to assemble does not include the right to choose with whom you assemble, and that one does not have the right to judge whom one wants to hire for one's business.

<blockquote>Improve Transportation Access to Jobs:   Three quarters of welfare recipients live in areas that are poorly served by public transportation and low-income workers spend up to 36 percent of their incomes on transportation.   As president, Barack Obama will work to eliminate transportation disparities.  Obama will double the federal Jobs Access and Reverse Commute program to ensure that additional federal public transportation dollars flow to the highest-need communities and that urban planning initiatives take this aspect of transportation policy into account.</blockquote>

Barack Obama believes that it is somehow legal, proper, and prudent for the Federal Government - versus, say, one's city - to be in the business of putting buses on city streets. As President, Barack Obama will send city buses into high crime areas and will magically "eliminate transportation disparities", presumably because Barack Obama is bad at math. Unless Obama intends to increase the numbers of the middle and upper classes riding public transportation (and, with things like traffic calming, he could think of doing such), this means he wants taxpayer money to go to poor people in order to afford a cab fare.

We've gone a long way from funding our survival from British invaders, to this time of bread and circuses.

<blockquote>Reduce Crime Recidivism by Providing Ex-Offender Supports:  America is facing an incarceration and post-incarceration crisis in urban communities.  Today, nearly 2 million children have a parent in a correctional facility.  In the U.S. Senate, Obama has worked to provide job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling, and employment opportunities to ex-offenders</blockquote>

So we should divert resources from the productive and peaceful to the destructive and violent. Fantastic. Even if one thought such a Utopian idea was gee-wiz, it requires civic ignorance to consider such a program on the federal level.

"Raise the Minimum Wage"

The Minimum Wage: Ignoring the Constitution for 70 Years!



These are only a fraction of the policy prescriptions on a fraction of the man's website. We are in a serious moral and civic crisis if even a plurality of American's think these prudent and wise.

 

<i>This piece has appeared as a guest column in the CW</I>


“It’s a free country,” is a common, snarky response to both doubting fellows seeking approval for their actions and preening egotists who think they know best. The phrase encapsulates American political culture: that neither brute nor egghead can tell a citizen a citizen what to do, that everyday people concerned with practical things don’t owe a lick of deference to agents of the state, armed with guns or PhDs.

But, we must ask, is it? Is America a free country? Certainly we citizens enjoy great amounts of freedom, but are we increasingly pawns manipulated by our government in the name of “social justice”? Ask yourself these questions:

How can an adult citizen – who can own property, own a weapon, vote, and die in the military - be charged as a “minor” in possession of alcohol?

How can an adult twenty year old citizen buy an AR15, be able to be entrusted with an automatic weapon by the Army, and yet not be allowed to purchase a handgun? Why are citizens subjected to asking permission of the State to carry their own property in the service of the fundamental right of self defense, even despite a clear, constitutional “shall not be infringed”?

Why is it that most speech is considered free, but speech about politics near election time is subject to myriad rules? Why can a citizen be fined and potentially jailed for having the gall to use his own dime to mention a candidate’s name on the airwaves near election time?

Why is everything from Washington nowadays “comprehensive,” “mandatory,” and “necessary”? Why can we not keep our own earnings, plan our own retirement, educate our own children, make sick or well our own bodies, keep our own lives private, or so often defend our own families without some busy-body from government at all levels telling us Yes, No, or Maybe-So?

The stark and sole answer to these questions is that we have given up so many of our private choices to government at all levels, and so many of our public choices best handled by communities, the several states, and/or hardly at all have been handed to or usurped by a federal government with a self serving, centralist worldview and insufficient knowledge of and deftness about local issues. Nine out of ten Amendments in the Bill of Rights are regularly abrogated, to the detriment of everyone’s right and responsibility to make one’s own decisions. Soldiers aren’t being quartered in our homes, but agents of the state have a presence in almost every document we put our name on and in every product we bring home (or are forbidden from so doing).

We can be arrested now for more violations of the law than at any time in our past: when was the last time Americans could openly drink a beer, sit around a beach bonfire, or so much as have a Swiss Army knife in a sports stadium without viewing the presence of a police officer as a source of worry? America is in a sorry state; I, for one, don’t see anything getting better.

Question: What do the climate alarmists have to support their constructs and solutions?

Answer: They have a hypothesis that the increase in carbon dioxide from the Industrial Revolution onward is the source for past and anticipated future rises in global temperatures, and they have computer climate models - based not on past data but on current hypotheses - that attempt to predict future climate data and patterns.

Or, in other words, they have nary a shred of evidence to prove their assertion that recent increases in global temperature are caused by something somehow different and more insidious than what has been the source of climatic variations - including both atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature - in the past.

Let me repeat that: they have <b>only</b> a hypothesis and the models - using far from complete data and a poverty of variables - using those assumptions.

These people are asking us to legislate, regulate, and order away our freedom based off of their <i>opinions</i>, based off of a faith - flying in the face of reason and history - in the future that they describe.

Why do they do this? Because most of our "activist" types are, in better terms, "authoritarian" types. They desire everyone to follow their behavior consciously because they think that they hold the monopoly on righteousness and unconsciously out of arrogance - because <i> they </i> are the intellectuals and it is they and their infinite reason that has undertaken a way of acting.

In short, they get their kicks out of making other people do what they want. The brutish and dumb examples of these people are playground bullies who grow up to be unsuccessful and delinquent. The nerdy, low self esteemed variety grow up to be regulators, progressive think tank policy analysts, and former Vice Presidents. Regardless of variety, they all think they have been oppressed by nature, by society, by those born into more wealth or in possession of better or different talents; they languish to lash out at their bogymen, the bourgeoisie, the man, the corporations, Zionist conspiracies, patriarchy or those more satisfied with their life. All of their real or imagined problems are put off on those they covet or those they invent. Sights of others coping and thriving with life's intrinsic variety are discounted as the sheepish behavior of conformists who haven't seen the intellectuals' emotional truth.

And what better way to strike back than with a hypothesis that can be made to seem non-falsifiable, than to be able to portray the activists as the saviors of humanity, while that humanity - ostensibly the source of the problem and those thus deserving of punishment - just tries to act out its everyday feat of survival. What a better way to strike back at the humanity and civilization that authoritarians feel distanced from than to tell the people of the world - who derive all they have physically from the world - that they are dooming themselves through the only methods by which they live, that somehow the fruits of their imagination - the technology which cannot be made without the elements of the earth - are "unnatural".

The global warming types are merely attempting to gain either power or a sense of empowerment for themselves at the expense of others, and they deserve nothing but civilized peoples' contempt.

This episode: the Necessary and Proper Clause versus the Tenth Amendment.

The Necessary and Proper Clause. Article One. Section Eight.

<blockquote>[Congress shall have the power...] To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof. </blockquote>

The Tenth Amendment. Amendments to the Constitution. Amendment Ten.

<blockquote>The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. </blockquote>

Notes:

1. As always, given the very nature of written Constitutions and written law, a preamble states the intent of the document and is not meant to carry the force of law. Thus appeals to a literal "general welfare" are faulty.

2. The Necessary and Proper Clause refers to "foregoing" powers, meaning that the power of Congress referred to in the clause only operates in context to the powers already listed (mostly in Article One, Section Eight). These "necessary and proper" powers are tempered by numerous other restrains such as those on ex post facto, bills of attainder, and Article One, Section One, which prohibits Congressional delegation of its sole Constitutional authority. Due to this fact, there is no dispute with the Tenth Amendment.

3. The Tenth Amendment, which due to the textual and common "foregoing" explicit and implied in the Necessary and Proper Clause does not conflict with any other portion of the Constitution, explicitly makes extra-constitutional laws unconstitutional. It states that in order for Congress to make a law, there must be Constitutional grounds for that law; there must be text within the Constitution that supports the supposition that such law is within the natural purview of both a legislative assembly and this Congress. It goes further and states that what is not in the jurisdiction of the federal government (most matters not related to the national defense or of Great Import - in other words, most governmental matters) is to be in the jurisdiction of the several states or, a state failing to contain within its constitution empowerment to that effect, the people.

4. Let us suppose, as a paltry few Federalists (as opposed to Democratic-Republicans), most Progressives, and all progressives have since 1791, that there was an inherent contradiction between the Necessary and Proper Clause and the Tenth Amendment. Which one would be considered to supersede; which one would take precedent as the Supreme Law of the Land?

The very nature of Amendments, whether to statutes or Constitutions, is that they render previous contradictory text null and void. The Thirteenth and Seventeenth Amendments famously did such things. Why? Because they were included in the text of the Constitution at a time proceeding earlier text; they "amended" what was considered to be a less than beneficial arrangement (although, as in the case of the Seventeenth, we can see that not all amendments are salutary). The simple fact that the Tenth Amendment was an amendment, and that it was made law after Article One, Section Eight, means that in any potential disagreement the Tenth Amendment takes precedent. Thousands of years of legal practice, and metaphysical and universal Good Sense, make this so.

What does this mean? This means that, unless a particular program -let us use as an example, an old age pension - is a delegated power in the Constitution, then no law that Congress may make to effect such a program can possibly be necessary and proper. This means that, with "foregoing" included in the clause, in addition to the very nature of written constitutions being whole and without "living" powers, the Constitution, as far as the listed portions go, is in harmony.

And most importantly, no one can use the Necessary and Proper clause to hide from the fact that when Congress attempts to enact a program that does not have explicit Constitutional approval - whether this be securities law, drug prohibition, Social Security, or funding petting zoos for inner city school children - then Congress is acting outside of its legal mandate, and any products of such are unconstitutional, illegal, and, in a sane and moral world in which we do not live, ignorable.

[Note: I attempted to submit this response to my campus newspaper, The Crimson White. It was, obviously, rejected]

When it comes to global warming, don't believe the hype.

Superstition and despotism - western political culture is imbued with a history of rising out of these perfidies. The thought that our actions - rain dances, virgins thrown into volcanoes, our perceived immorality - mitigates or brings on the ravages of nature is an old one, and it is a thought that the scientific process has time after time shown false. The fear that accompanies these superstitions has been a tool of despots for just as long - fear of diving punishment has led to obedience and subservience to "God Kings" and to the divine right rulers. H.L. Mencken once summed up this world view: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." Today, we are confronted in many ways - all of them which feel to the great body of normal people with normal lives (those who are not perennially indignant activists and/or glossy eyed zealots) less than immediate and in many cases quite abstract and sophistical - by these examples of mysticism and tyranny. One of these such monsters is the specter of anthropogenic global warming, the largest in a long stream of hobgoblins for which we the peons, rubes, and knuckle-draggers are ultimately blamed.

Fortunately for mankind, but unfortunately for Jay Hodgson - author of the recent opinion in the CW, "The melting snows of Kilimanjaro" - the activists and sign-wavers whose self-esteem and federal grant money depend on milking fear for all it is worth, we as a people do not have much other than smog and wallet-lightening to fear from driving around our fossil fuel powered cars. This viewpoint - held by many well respected physicists, oceanologists, and meteorologists in the academia and public service - however, is dismissed by those eager to wallop the nasty, mean corporations in the name of the environment (and virtually everything else) as illegitimate from the start since "there is no doubt" and "the scientific community is actually near 100 percent agreement." Dissent from the environmentalist line is shunned because disagreement with "the experts" and with a majority of informed and uninformed citizens is somehow dangerous. Those who disagree with the proposition that man is mostly or at all the cause of global warming are routinely described by both the activists and the press as "deniers" - somehow linking those who question the misinterpretations, distortions, and outright fabrications of such groups as the IPCC to Holocaust deniers.

Anthropogenic global warming skeptics and indeed all people have good reason to doubt claims such as those made in Al Gore's ironically named documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. The very IPCC graph that Al Gore displays, showing a correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and atmospheric temperatures, casts doubt on the propositions behind Gore's pronouncements. One must show contingency to breach the boundary between correlation and causation. In simple terms: if X and Y always occur together, X can only cause Y if X comes before Y. Luckily, the data shows such a contingency, but unluckily for the scare-mongers the causation is in reverse of what they state. Global CO2 spikes after a rise in global temperatures, in time variations typically between 200 and 800 years. Oceans cover 71 percent of the earth, with an average depth of 3,700 meters. One cubed meter corresponds with 1000 kg of water. It thus takes eras for entire oceans to undergo significant changes in temperatures. Along the same logic, it would take several hundred years for even the upper ocean to consistently change temperature. When this happens, though, carbon dioxide that was absorbed by the ocean is released into the atmosphere (the ocean, for the uninformed, is the source of the vast majority of atmospheric carbon dioxide in particular and greenhouse gases in general), explaining the centuries long gap between rises in global temperatures and rises in atmospheric carbon dioxide. In order to turn the causation the other way, though, "climatologists" base their computer models off of false data: they factor in amounts of current and future carbon dioxide that are many times more than actual current levels and most predicted increases.

In fact, much of the climatologists' energy is directed into the creation of various computer models in an attempt to predict future climate: these are the basis of most of the media hysteria that we hear on a constant basis. The very fact that these models are constantly being updated and revised - with the models of even past IPPC panels being obsolete - calls their entire legitimacy into question: the earth's climate is filled with literally millions of possible confounds dating back to times where our estimates of conditions are little more than intelligent sounding guesses. It should come as no surprise then that climate model after climate model has failed the most simple test of validity: the ability to predict present conditions based off of previously discovered and solid historical data. The very climate model used by the 1995 IPPC report to generate the now well known and scary looking "hockey stick" graph showing a future exponential rise in temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide has been shown to generate that same graphical pattern no matter what data was entered into it. The climate is simply too vast and too complex to take into account all possible confounds, and this guarantees failure if one's basic premise is flawed or if one refuses to take into account such a possibility.This makes very much sense if one considers a basic proposition: if meteorologists are wrong to alarming degrees about weather months, weeks, even days off, how in the world can we expect an accurate prediction of conditions in years to come?

Fortunately, there is something quantifiable that, regardless of other conditions, correlates even closer than CO2 with global temperatures: solar radiation. During periods of intense solar activity (as measured now and in the past by frequency of sun-spots, and additionally in the present with various technologies), the world has heated. During periods of solar radiation decline, Earth has been plagued with "mini Ice Ages." During one such high period of solar activity known as the Medieval Warm Period, Norsemen farmed Greenland and vineyards thrived in even northern England. During a large period of low solar activity, the Rivers Thames and Delaware went so far as to freeze - a very uncommon occurrence. We have recently discovered that the Martian Polar Ice Caps - indeed the whole of Mars - in addition to other planets in our Solar System (key word: Solar) have been warming for quite some time: specifically, since the 1970s, when Earth came out of a 30 year cooling period (replete with hysteria about "Global Cooling" and an impending ice age).

In human history, global temperatures, atmospheric CO2, and the rate change of both have been higher than we have seen of late. And throughout history, such phenomena have acted independently of human action. This makes nothing but sense when one considers that atmospheric carbon dioxide makes up around a paltry two percent of all greenhouse gas. The overwhelming volume of greenhouse gas is made up of water vapor at 95 percent. Water vapor is 270 times more efficient at heat absorption than carbon dioxide (and the vast majority of carbon dioxide is generated by - guess what - natural causes). Given that the past is replete with climes much more rich in CO2 and solar radiation, we must ask the question: What sport utility vehicles were the Normans, Mongols, and Teutons driving to cause all of that 14th century mugginess? And who was that brave and ingenious cro magnon soul who saved mankind from the Ice Age by churning exhaust from this Suburban into the atmosphere?

For the sake of brevity, I will now delve right into the juicy parts of opinion writing: political accusations. Why has this hysteria become such a driving force in politics, and why does it seem that those whose general political philosophy call for ever powerful government (the Left in general and McCain types on the Right) have such a monopoly on this flabbergastingly insipid issue. The answer, dear Watson, is power pure and simple. The activist Left has for generations attempted to make normal Americans feel guilty about their own personal success, telling them that by feeding their families and maybe, just maybe, saving up enough money for a nice vacation and a car big enough to take the kids to soccer that average Americans are living off of the backs of variously defined workers (as opposed to the end-game of socialist states, where only Party apparatchiks and the secret police - in Britain, the CCTV watchers et al - live off workers backs, and the workers live off stale bread). Politicians and bureaucrats are ever desperate to justify their existence and feel important at all of the right Washington cocktail parties. What better way to accomplish these ends than to tell citizens that their own enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is dooming us all to Biblical events of the sort predicted by Gore and the writers of Day After Tomorrow. People who dare point out that a given proposal to arrest global warming is unwise, untenable, unconstitutional, or downright un-American and authoritarian can be brushed aside by claiming the most dire of dire emergencies: global catastrophe on a grand scale. Or, in the words of Benito Mussolini: "We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become." The environmentalists think that humans are too impudent and childish to be left to their own devices and property - we humans apparently make a sufficient muck of things that only the elite brains of those who care are fit to rectify the situation. On behalf of those in the public who express considerable doubt about the theories lumped on us by the sophists and calculators of the hopefully-ruling class, I would like to say to Mr. Hodgson, the author of the small violin sad song story about Kilimanjaro: stop trying to throw us into the volcano like so many virgins in the vain hope that Pele will spare us his wrath. The Earth will do what it wants, when it wants, and we are only along for the ride. Free citizens don't need some cabal of busy-bodies poking around in their affairs, and fie upon those who would attempt to use this blown up (and, many would say, made up) concern of "catastrophic climate change" to get Americans to give up even more of their freedom.