On the Senate side, Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA) have introduced their own "pollution permit" bill, amusingly dubbed America's Climate Security Act [1], to "reduce global warming pollution." It proposes both carbon cap-and-trade and monetary transition assistance to current carbon slobs.

Never to be outdone, Democratic White House frontrunner Hillary Clinton -- no political dummy -- is promising she'd broker and sign a globally binding post Kyoto emissions treaty, a full 2 years before the current failed accord is set to expire.

And closer to people's homes, NBC dedicated last week to "green" programming which, amid its silly how to be a good little greenie tips, spotlighted both Democrats and Republicans vowing to save the planet from "global warming pollution." Automaker Ford wasn't alone in hysteria capitulation when it released a commercial wherein a little girl asks her dad to drop her off a block short of her destination to avoid the humiliation of being seen in a non-hybrid SUV.

It's becoming painfully apparent that the public is buying into this rubbish.

An October CNN/Research Corp. poll found 56% of respondents believing that "the phenomenon of global warming has been proven, and can be largely blamed on human endeavors, such as power plants and factories." And a Harris poll that same month revealed 71% believing that "increased carbon dioxide and other gases released into the atmosphere will, if unchecked, lead to global warming and an increase in average temperatures."

Mind you, while science attests that the planet is, indeed, at an apex of a historically natural vacillation of cold and warm phases, there exists absolutely no proven influence on climate by man-made CO2 emissions.

And yet, the Big Green Scare Machine (TBGSM), its MSM cogs, and Gorebot drones have managed to convince enough people otherwise to successfully engrain this nonsense into the very conscience of society, primarily by silencing dissent with ploys of flawed reason.

Clearing the Corridor to Clouded Correlation

We've all seen them present evidence of an undeniable upward cycle, then label anthropogenic global warming (AGW) skeptics as "warming deniers" who rebuff the proof right before their eyes. This dishonest little dodge is an inverted Straw man argument [2] as it blatantly misrepresents a position, proves its own distortion, and then concludes that the real position has been affirmed.

The upshot of this fraud is a population that largely believes skeptics doubt the warming trend itself, not its anthropogenic influence, and that thereby lies about the"debate." Moreover, this implied association blurs that distinction, leaving many with the very false yet very real impression that they have witnessed convincing evidence of both.

Pretty neat trick -- turning a skeptic questioning the impact of manmade greenhouse gases into a boogieman denying the planet is warming to imply all cynics are obviously wrong about both.

However, as with stage magic, logical illusions require audience receptivity preparation. Here, instilling an assumed connection is paramount.

In An Inconvenient Truth, Gore sermonized before a graph he claimed depicted both unprecedented modern temperatures and startling correlations between temperature and CO2 fluctuations over eons of time. In truth, even were the representations honest -- they were based upon the so-called "hockeystick" graph produced by Dr. Michael Mann which has been proven inaccurate, particularly in its record heat claims -- viewers had no way of discerning the key issue of whether temperature increases followed or preceded rises in CO2.

Of course, had the CO2 increases trailed those of temperature -- as many believe to be the case (solar and/or volcanically warmed oceans emit more CO2) -- then the entire GHG theory crumbles. Indeed, without such temporal reference, Gore is employing a common correlation versus causation confusion trick called Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (with this, therefore because of this).

The absurdity of such illogic was cleverly lampooned by Bobby Henderson, who wrote in a May 2005 letter to the Kansas School Board:

"You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature."

Gore's flamboyant overtures notwithstanding -- correlation does not imply causation. Of course, nor does it disqualify it. Take, for instance the obvious correlation between global temperatures and sunspot cycles which is entirely ignored by the "solar deniers." From the Maunder Minimum's parallel to the Little Ice in the 17th century (chart) to today's Modern Maximum's place in perfect harmony with our higher temperatures, one would expect this, not hypothetical GHG theories, to have been declared the "debate ender."

Instead, through the chicanery of inverted arguments and the deliberate confusing of cause and effect, TBGSM has imposed the illusory assertion that skeptics deny rising temperatures while science has proven that man controls the thermostat.

This false Fait Accompli lends solace to an equally counterfeit disregard of remaining doubt.

Loaded Questions and Quack Quandaries

So what are we (or you) going to do to save the planet from manmade global warming?

The problem is posed ad nauseum in varying forms to politicians, talk show guests and audiences, students and climate change summit attendees. And most eagerly respond, despite having been asked something equally prejudicial to the classic law school conundrum "so, when did you stop beating your wife?"

Compelling anyone to address AGW remedies is likewise dishonest, as it implies concurrence with the unproven premise that mankind stands as guilty as the accused wife-beater.

This devious ploy of flawed reasoning is known as a Complex Question, as it deceitfully rests on an arguable assumption; any available answer would appear to endorse that assumption.

The complex question is actually a subtle form of False Dilemma, which is an alarmist staple, created by coercing someone to choose between 2 options when others are readily available. For instance, we either act now to reduce global warming or face untold cataclysm later. How often have you heard that nonsense?

And no wonder.

Before they might accept outlandish solutions, it is imperative that the public at large be terrified by AGW's primary false dilemma of action versus planetary calamity.

And once again, logical fallacies prove to be the stuff that green dreams are made of.

Fear and Loathing in the Troposphere

Without hyping the purported consequences of global warming, misrepresenting its cause would be of no particular political or economic value.

Fear refined yields a powerful motivational fuel, and without it, the public would quickly grow inured to doomsday scares and trendy liberal reflexive remedies. That's why, as an adjunct to baseless catastrophic projections, Misleading Vividness is so vital. You've seen the pictures of snow-barren mountaintops, blazing forests, reputedly doomed to extinction Polar bears ostensibly stranded on floating ice sheets (in fact, the species has evolved to swim between sheets) and huge chunks of ice falling to the water in Greenland (a normal summertime occurrence).

Alarmists are well aware that by flashing these visually striking images as backdrop to vividly descriptive exaggerations and lies, anecdotal evidence can be used as the basis for remarkably hasty generalizations. Indeed, audiences of such spectacle are apt to engage emotionally and, consequently, willing to suspend whatever skepticism their better judgment implies.

More despicable still, manufactured images of even greater horrific impact are routinely interspersed to further agitate the easily impressionable. Remember Gore's dreadful depictions of New York flooding and ground zero disappearing under water?

But surely there are those possessed of highly cognitive and expertly trained minds destined to ultimately save us from our own frailties of logic, aren't there?

Yes there are, but no, they won't.

We've previously revealed many of the myriad scientists who dare challenge the "settled science" of AGW, bravely risking ridicule, defunding, demotion and accusations of both lack of care about future generations (another straw man argument ) and being an "oil shill" (circumstantial ad hominem).

A Circumstantial Ad Hominem attacks a position by asserting that the person taking it is doing so simply out of self interest. While there's generally little or no proof proffered, weak-minded observers often disqualify the accused nonetheless.

At the 2007 Oscars, Gore smugly told the audience -- and an estimated 1 billion television viewers:
"that resolving the threat posed by a warming climate is ‘not a political issue, it's a moral issue.'"
In other words, if you don't agree with him, you're immoral.

It's not hard to surmise where the drones acquire their penchant for broad ad hominem attacks on heretics. Nor why it's considerably easier for those same skeptics to remain mum.

Tricks of the Tirade

actually devoid, alarmists compensate with a seemingly bottomless armory of fallacious arguments. Behold but a few more of their sleights-of-thought.

• Ad hominems are the falsely negative form of Genetic Fallacy, a logic flaw committed when an idea is evaluated on its source, rather than its merit. Conversely, similar mind trickery can be played to assert an idea which is falsely positive. We see this irrationality in Gorebots who lecture that if their hero says the planet has a fever and it's our fault and only he knows how to save it - it does and it is and he is.

• Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (after this therefore because of this) is a similar tactic to Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, but here the implication is that if one event follows another, the first event therefore caused the second.
"Temperatures have been rising since the start of the industrial age. Therefore companies like Exxon Mobil are melting the polar ice caps"

• Affirming the consequent is an asininity which asserts the "then" of a conditional (consequent) first, and concludes with the "if" (antecedent).
"If GHG were making the Earth warmer then we'd have less snow. Therefore, if we have less snow then GHG are making the Earth warmer."

• Appeal to Consequences of a Belief is to suggest a belief to be true simply because if people didn't accept it there'd be negative consequences.
"We must treat Anthropogenic Global Warming as real because if people refuse to embrace it there'll be no hope for our children"

• Argumentum ad ignorantiam (argument to ignorance) is a fallacy of assuming something is true simply because it has yet to be proven false.
"Global warming is certainly caused by greenhouse gases because nobody has demonstrated conclusively that it is not"
• And the incessant "scientific consensus" claim is a combination of Appeal to Authority, Appeal to Popularity and, of course, Appeal to Bravo Sierra.

Further favorites include appeals to fear, to novelty (newness of an idea is somehow evidence of its truth), and of course, to popularity (an idea must be true simply because it is widely held). There's also The Relativist Fallacy, in which the arguer claims that while something might be true for others, he or she is exempt. Any ideas on this one (hint - think Limo Libs)?

The Debate is NOT Over When the Fat Man Sings

Given the cache of weapons TBGSM wields to shut-down debate, its obvious they've no misconceptions of prevailing should one accidentally break out. Indeed, Gore, himself, has recently refused to debate every AGW challenger tossing the gauntlet (Avery, Lord Monckton, Singer, Ball, etc).

But last week, Gore appeared on the Today Show and was asked about a WSJ op-ed penned by IPCC member and co-Nobel Prize winner John Christy which challenged Gore's dire analysis of global warming's impact and origins. The ensuing response was astounding. After calling Christy an "outlier" who's "way outside the scientific consensus" (Ad Hominem Tu Quoque), he chided journalism's provision of equal-time to opposing viewpoints on the subject:

"Part of the challenge the news media has had in covering this story is the old habit of taking the on the one hand, on the other hand approach. There are still people who believe that the Earth is flat... you don't search out for someone who still believes the Earth is flat and give them equal time"

Okay, so he didn't actually invent the internet, but he did manage to concoct his own logical fallacy -- The Flat Earther Argument -- X disagrees with Y. Y proclaims debate over. X therefore adheres to 600 year-old geological misconceptions and is to be shunned.

Now, the same alarmists who'll follow this charlatan debate-aphobe anywhere speak of an impending "tipping point," at which the Earth's destiny will be calcified. And, while they're dead wrong about the nemesis we face, their concerns are sound.

The Big Green Scare Machine has met no burden of proof whatsoever. To the contrary, they refuse and evade every opportunity to take on their dissenters in any open, objective and analytical forum.

And yet, by way of their fraudulent tactics, they're undeniably winning the clash for public opinion. Should this trend continue, rather than prepare for the consequences of naturally shifting climate patterns, we'll risk untold wealth, progress, resources, and yes -- capitalism itself, in a popular but fool's quest to tame an immutable force of nature.

The imperative to arrest this proliferating cognitive plague through unremitting rebuttal and steadfast refusal to assimilate with its foolish collective mindset or be diverted by its puerile mind games cannot be overstated.

Nearly 20,000 scientists have signed a petition disputing AGW and denouncing Kyoto. This must be loudly shouted at those sluggishly slipping into the green stupor to reinvigorate debate and assure that reasoned voices are heard over the irrational drone of this ultimately political machine.

Footnotes:
[1] Friends of the Earth abhor this bill. Rather than directing auction proceeds to wind, solar and other untenable "renewable" energy companies, it would subsidize the coal industry's efforts to develop carbon capture and storage mechanisms. Considering that base load electric requirements will likely be met by coal-fired plants indefinitely, this green objection to helping "clean them up" certainly speaks volumes to their actual motives.

[2] In her February 9th column, Ellen Goodman combined misleading vividness, blatant ad hominem and stunning ignorance when she wrote that "global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers." Ms. Goodman might be pleased to learn that most links used to clarify logical fallacies used by AGW alarmists herein launch The Nizkor Holocaust Educational Resource Project where they are described alongside other Techniques of Holocaust Denial

Marc Sheppard is a technology consultant, software engineer, writer, and political and systems analyst. He is a regular contributor to American Thinker and welcomes your feedback.

Source of original Internet article: www.americanthinker.com

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Yes, indeed. If only we would elect an alpha male or beta female who cares about each and every one of us, partisan bickering would end, pork barrel spending would end, global competition would end, foreign interventionism would end, global warming would end, increases in the price of gas and healthcare would end, the invasion of brown people would end, radical Islam would end, and in-grown toenails would end.

But what about farm subsidies? Are they going to end? Well, no, not if someone wants to be elected president.

Then if a president is powerless to stop something as uncomplicated as farm subsidies, why would someone think that a candidate would be able to stop, well, anything putting Americans in a funk and feeling the nation is in decline?

Beats me. But I do know that the nation has been transformed into a kleptocracy under majority rule, or mob rule, if you will. Over half of Americans are now either mooching off the minority through the tax code, or working for the government, or working in private-sector jobs that owe their existence and good pay to government regulations.

They might complain about the other guy's rice bowl, but they will do anything to protect their own rice bowl. The result, of course, is the status quo, and the farm bill. The status quo is a kleptocracy and ever-growing government.

These people all depend on force for their jobs, subsidies, entitlements and handouts. For example, if it weren't for farmers banding together to compel the government to give them taxpayers' money, non-farmers would never hand their money to them.

Unfortunately, government force doesn't work well in the other direction. As political science and economic principles explain, it is nearly impossible for citizens to band together, legally speaking, and get government to stop farmers (or any other organized special-interest group) from using force against them. If they can't stop 2.1 million farmers, they certainly can't stop 3 million unionized teachers, 35 million AARP members, or 48 million Social Security recipients.

Well, that's not completely true. They can stop them, but it would require something that I don't advocate: the use of extra-legal force. It would take only about 100,000 men and women marching on the Capitol with torches, pitchforks, feathers and hot tar to convince members of Congress that it is in their best interest to stop taking people's silverware and giving it farmers, teacher unions, wealthy geezers, and other special interests. If it came to a choice between losing an election and being tarred and feathered, they'd pick losing.

Enough fantasy. Back to reality.

The reality is that the nation isn't going to be brought together by Barack, Hillary, Mitt, Rudy, Mike, John, Fred, or anyone else. When government degenerates into a political spoils system as our Congress has, it is impossible for citizens to trust each other or their government.

An author and published columnist, Mr. Cantoni can be reached at ccan2@aol.com. Mr. Cantoni is also a frequent contributor to Alan Korwin's highly informative Page Nine.

Mr. Korwin is the author of "Gun Laws in America" and many other fine 2nd Amendment and firearms-related publications. Please visit www.gunlaws.com where you can subscribe to an Internet version of Page Nine and order your own copy of his highly educational publications.

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Israeli hospitals and food along with Western aid prevent the inevitable famine and mass death, but that only builds up the pressure of a ballooning population dependent on the charity of others and devoid of any useful function. The picture looks nearly as bad across the Muslim world. Iran has its own demographic population explosion which is driving its own expansionism, while Egypt faces a swelling population and swelling poverty, driving the popularity of the Muslim brotherhood.

The well meaning Western aims for the Muslim world ran into the law of unintended consequences, because not only does the Muslim world suffer from a growth spurt but much of that growth spurt is single sex. Sex screening via ultrasound machines before birth in the areas that have access to them and infanticide and honor killings in the areas that don't have them, repeatedly target girls... creating an even greater surplus of males. Combine that with the propensity for older men to marry younger women and wealthier men marrying multiple wives, not only does the Muslim world have a population boom but that population boom quickly becomes a population of angry and dissatisfied young men. A population that has to be burned off somehow.

The engine of Islamist Jihad is that surplus of young men. Most Arab Muslim societies are static and slow to adapt to changing times. That means far fewer conventional opportunities for the newest generation of men which leads them naturally into armed gangs, militias, terrorist organization and madrassas. The dissatisfied populations of the Muslim world cannot be appeased with democracy or foreign policy changes. Their core problem is that they are members of societies incapable of coping with their own problems. Instead of addressing those problems, the Arab Muslim world exports them through immigration.

Immigration allows the Muslim world to unburden itself of a dangerous surplus male population. Those same males move on to Europe, America and Australia and become those countries problems. To compensate for the shortfall of Muslim women, they marry Western women. They send money back to the home country and support Jihad in their home countries, either financially or by actively enlisting in terrorist cells. This neatly exports the Jihad from Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to the West and makes it our problem.

The simpleminded answers offered by everyone from Michael Moore to Ron Paul arguing that our foreign policy is to blame, ignores that terrorism is just another one in a card deck of problems generated by Muslim immigration and Islam's demographic problem. The same surplus of males that is set to destabilize China is already badly destabilizing the Middle East and the West. The difference is that where China is actively dealing with the problem, the Middle East is simply exporting it.

Islam's Demographic problem is the result of a meeting between two civilizations, with the superior civilization generously bestowing some of its humanitarian gifts on the more backward civilization without realizing the price that would be paid for it.

The Jihad, the Clash of Civilizations, the campaign of terrorism and violence that we have seen is the product of that same demographic expansion sweeping across the West and purging the way in the name of their own brand of Lebensraum, crying "Make Room. Make Room!"

As Western birth rates drop to "make room", Muslim birth rates continue rising, parasitic on the technology and charity of the West. Like a virus devouring the body that sustains it, Islam's Jihad would never survive its own success. Were that same agricultural and medical infrastructure to collapse, Muslims would wake to find themselves in a strictly Malthusian world devoid of charity or compassion in which they would have to face the consequences of their own destructiveness.

Democracy is not the solution to the Muslim world's problems, civilization is and civilization requires maturity. The West has provided the Arab Muslim world with just enough of a taste of civilization to infuriate it and to cause a variety of social and political problems. Democracy in the Muslim world just turns the violence, the irresponsibility and the frustration into the electoral platforms of Islamist parties. Civilization is what is needed, but a people must choose civilization, they must choose to grow and learn. Instead the Jihad is the Muslim world's reply to the West's offer of civilization.

Sultan Knish
December 18, 2007

Original article: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2007/12/islams-demographic-weapon-against-west.html

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GOP leaders patted themselves on the back for their toughness. President Bush made a huge to-do in signing the bill into law. Never mind the lack of funding for the fence and the failure to address many other immediate reforms that could have been adopted immediately to strengthen immigration enforcement, close deportation loopholes and provide systemic relief at the border without the need for a single brick or bulldozer.

On the very day the bill was signed, open-borders politicians were already moving to water it down. Texas Republican Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn pushed for "flexibility to choose other options instead of fencing, if needed." Six months after passage of the Secure Fence Act -- now interpreted by Washington as the Flexible Non-Fence Act or, as I call it, the FINO (Fence in Name Only) Act -- 700 miles shrunk to "somewhere in the ballpark" of 370 miles. A 14-mile fence-building project in San Diego was stalled for years by environmental legal challenges and budget shortfalls. The first deadline -- a May 30, 2007 requirement for installation of an "interlocking surveillance camera system" along the border in California and Arizona -- passed unmet. GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter, one of the few Republican presidential candidates to walk the talk on border security, blasted the Bush administration for suffering from "a case of 'the slows' on border enforcement."

More than a year after the law's passage, the citizen watchdog group Grassfire reports that just five miles of double-layer fencing has been built in the first 12 months of implementation of the act. Five lousy miles. The Government Accountability Office claims 70 miles were erected -- but most of that fencing failed to meet the specifications of the law.

Is Congress up in arms? Will there be accountability? Don't make me snort. Instead of demanding that the law be enforced, the pols are sabotaging the law. As part of the omnibus spending package passed this week, House Democrats incorporated Senate Republicans' provisions to remove the two-layer fencing requirements and the specific target list of fencing locations.

GOP Rep. Peter T. King, who sponsored the Secure Fence Act, told the Washington Times: "This is either a blatant oversight or a deliberate attempt to disregard the border security of our country. As it's currently written, the omnibus language guts the Secure Fence Act almost entirely. Quite simply, it is unacceptable."

But so totally, totally predictable.

Republican Leader John Boehner tried to blame the House Democrat majority: "The fact that this was buried in a bloated, 3,500-page omnibus speaks volumes about the Democrats' unserious approach on border security and illegal immigration," he said. "Gutting the Secure Fence Act will make our borders less secure, but it's consistent with the pattern of behavior we've seen all year from this majority." But it's border state Republicans who've been gunning to undermine the law while the ink was still fresh.

To add insult to injury and homeland insecurity upon homeland insecurity, Congress failed to adopt a ban on federal aid to sanctuary cities that prevent government employees and law enforcement officers from asking about immigration status; voted to stall implementation of stricter ID standards at border crossings; and miraculously found enough money to provide $10 million in "emergency" funding for attorneys of illegal aliens.

Next time you hear a leading presidential candidate try to woo you with his nine-point immigration enforcement plan or his secure ID plan or his Secure Borders platform, point to the Incredible Disappearing Border Fence. Poof! That is what happens to election-season homeland security promises. Why would theirs be any different?

Michelle Malkin
December 19, 2007
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/homeland.php?id=1385927

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Increasing use

The use of biometric data is increasing throughout the government. For the past two years, the Defense Department has been storing in a database images of fingerprints, irises and faces of more than 1.5 million Iraqi and Afghan detainees, Iraqi citizens and foreigners who need access to U.S. military bases. The Pentagon also collects DNA samples from some Iraqi detainees, which are stored separately.The Department of Homeland Security has been using iris scans at some airports to verify the identity of travelers who have passed background checks and who want to move through lines quickly. The department is also looking to apply iris- and face-recognition techniques to other programs. The DHS already has a database of millions of sets of fingerprints, which includes records collected from U.S. and foreign travelers stopped at borders for criminal violations, from U.S. citizens adopting children overseas, and from visa applicants abroad. There could be multiple records of one person's prints.

"It's going to be an essential component of tracking," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's enabling the Always On Surveillance Society."

If successful, the system planned by the FBI, called Next Generation Identification, will collect a wide variety of biometric information in one place for identification and forensic purposes.

In an underground facility the size of two football fields, a request reaches an FBI server every second from somewhere in the United States or Canada, comparing a set of digital fingerprints against the FBI's database of 55 million sets of electronic fingerprints. A possible match is made -- or ruled out--as many as 100,000 times a day.

Fast fingerprint checks

Soon, the server at CJIS headquarters will also compare palm prints and, eventually, iris images and face-shape data such as the shape of an earlobe. If all goes as planned, a police officer making a traffic stop or a border agent at an airport could run a 10-fingerprint check on a suspect and within seconds know if the person is on a database of the most wanted criminals and terrorists. An analyst could take palm prints lifted from a crime scene and run them against the expanded database. Intelligence agents could exchange biometric information worldwide.

More than 55 percent of the search requests now are made for background checks on civilians in sensitive positions in the federal government, and jobs that involve children and the elderly, Bush said. Currently those prints are destroyed or returned when the checks are completed. But the FBI is planning a "rap-back" service, under which employers could ask the FBI to keep employees' fingerprints in the database, subject to state privacy laws, so that if that employees are ever arrested or charged with a crime, the employers would be notified.

Advocates say bringing together information from a wide variety of sources and making it available to multiple agencies increases the chances to catch criminals. The Pentagon has already matched several Iraqi suspects against the FBI's criminal fingerprint database. The FBI intends to make both criminal and civilian data available to authorized users, officials said. There are 900,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers who can query the fingerprint database today, they said.

Covert recognition technology

The FBI's biometric database, which includes criminal history records, communicates with the Terrorist Screening Center's database of suspects and the National Crime Information Center database, which is the FBI's master criminal database of felons, fugitives and terrorism suspects.

The FBI is building its system according to standards shared by Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
At the West Virginia University Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR), 45 minutes north of the FBI's biometric facility in Clarksburg, researchers are working on capturing images of people's irises at distances of up to 15 feet, and of faces from as far away as 200 yards. Soon, those researchers will do biometric research for the FBI.

Covert iris- and face-image capture is several years away, but it is of great interest to government agencies.
Think of a Navy ship approaching a foreign vessel, said Bojan Cukic, CITeR's co-director. "It would help to know before you go on board whether the people on that ship that you can image from a distance, whether they are foreign warfighters, and run them against a database of known or suspected terrorists," he said.

Reliability questioned

Skeptics say that such projects are proceeding before there is evidence that they reliably match suspects against a huge database.

In the world's first large-scale, scientific study on how well face recognition works in a crowd, the German government this year found that the technology, while promising, was not yet effective enough to allow its use by police. The study was conducted from October 2006 through January at a train station in Mainz, Germany, which draws 23,000 passengers daily. The study found that the technology was able to match travelers' faces against a database of volunteers more than 60 percent of the time during the day, when the lighting was best. But the rate fell to 10 to 20 percent at night.

To achieve those rates, the German police agency said it would tolerate a false positive rate of 0.1 percent, or the erroneous identification of 23 people a day. In real life, those 23 people would be subjected to further screening measures, the report said.

Accuracy improves as techniques are combined, said Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's biometric services section chief. The Next Generation database is intended to "fuse" fingerprint, face, iris and palm matching capabilities by 2013, she said.

To safeguard privacy, audit trails are kept on everyone who has access to a record in the fingerprint database, Del Greco said. People may request copies of their records, and the FBI audits all agencies that have access to the database every three years, she said.

"We have very stringent laws that control who can go in there and to secure the data," Bush said.

Privacy concerns

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the ability to share data across systems is problematic. "You're giving the federal government access to an extraordinary amount of information linked to biometric identifiers that is becoming increasingly inaccurate," he said.

In 2004, the Electronic Privacy Information Center objected to the FBI's exemption of the National Crime Information Center database from the Privacy Act requirement that records be accurate. The group noted that the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2001 found that information in the system was "not fully reliable" and that files "may be incomplete or inaccurate." FBI officials justified that exemption by claiming that in law enforcement data collection, "it is impossible to determine in advance what information is accurate, relevant, timely and complete."

Privacy advocates worry about the ability of people to correct false information. "Unlike say, a credit card number, biometric data is forever," said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley technology forecaster. He said he feared that the FBI, whose computer technology record has been marred by expensive failures, could not guarantee the data's security. "If someone steals and spoofs your iris image, you can't just get a new eyeball," Saffo said.

In the future, said CITeR director Lawrence A. Hornak, devices will be able to "recognize us and adapt to us."
"The long-term goal," Hornak said, is "ubiquitous use" of biometrics. A traveler may walk down an airport corridor and allow his face and iris images to be captured without ever stepping up to a kiosk and looking into a camera, he said.

"That's the key," he said. "You've chosen it. You have chosen to say, 'Yeah, I want this place to recognize me.' "

By Ellen Nakashima
Fri., Dec. 21, 2007
Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
© 2007 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/21/AR2007122102544.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=new

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22366208/

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Could this be the real reason Compean and Ramos were prosecuted by U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton? Were they (and are we) being sent the unambiguous dictate that drug dealers must be allowed to ply their trade – which includes crossing our southern border to do so – without any interference from local and federal law enforcement and any of the U.S. citizenry? Is this a warning “We the People” to “back off” or also face jail time? Sure sounds like it. But apparently, this mandate applies to only a certain class of drugs and their suppliers.

Our government, via a U.S. Senate subcommittee, is on its way to taking over control of Major League Baseball with one of its seemingly endless investigations – this time over steroid use. So, per our government, steroid use by the players in baseball will now carry a prison sentence with the full weight of the U.S. government behind it.

Note: No Senate investigations are currently reported to be ongoing with regard to other professional sports. Steroids are already banned. But, apparently, other highly addictive drugs – which impact the general population areas of the country – are allowed and even supported. And again – drug dealers are being pardoned while those attempting to stop them are being jailed under increasingly trumped up charges based upon seemingly false evidence or the suppression of said “evidence’s” lack of substantiation. This is scary, folks.

There are so many things wrong with these actions that it boggles the mind. We now appear to have a government that is overtly fighting against the people who elected its members to fight for them. With an increasingly sickening certainty and inevitability, those whom we elect to political office can’t seem to become elites quickly enough.

These “elites” are the ones who have – or will soon have – the means to protect themselves from their own ill-conceived decisions…decisions that will allow this cream-of-the-crop class to remain in their selective and superior positions while the rest of us must now fight for our lives. While these now privileged politicians pass legislation designed to better themselves, their families and supporters, the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves against said politicians who have now seized power away from us. When criminals are let out of jail, those trying to stop criminals are placed into or forced to remain in jail and members of the U.S. Congress use their color of their authority and power to advance their own political and personal agendas, “We the People” are in tremendous peril.

And so is our country. Either fight back against them, or prepare yourselves to become a member of the great and unwashed masses.

The time required to save the country may no longer be on our side.

Original article can be read on the Internet at:
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/homeland.php?id=1385884

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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In this battle, however, good sometimes wins over evil. That occurred when “a measure to expand hate-crime protections,” as the liberal Washington Post put it, was dropped from a Pentagon spending bill by House and Senate negotiators. The measure had been introduced in the Senate by the notorious Ted Kennedy, who goes down in history as the only senator in U.S. history to let a young girl die in the bottom of his submerged car. That was a fate much worse than waterboarding. Kennedy, of course, is also opposed to waterboarding. Terrorists, he believes, should enjoy more rights than Mary Jo Kopechne, who died in that car struggling to breathe as the water enveloped her.

Kennedy is a concrete example of liberalism as a mental disorder. In his warped world view, real people and real victims such as Mary Jo Kopechne have no rights, but it is wrong to “hate” people and such “hate” should be rooted out and punished by federal authorities. This is their agenda—making us think like them, or at least getting us to quit thinking and quit acting on behalf of what is truly important in this country, such as the survival of our nation and our families.

Credit goes to the White House and Congressional Republicans for forcing the dropping of the “hate crimes” provision. The White House had threatened to veto the measure. It would elevate homosexuals, the supposed victims of “hate crimes,” to protected status under law, and would leave other classes of people (such as the elderly, the military, police officers, and victims of prior crimes) without similar special status.

Now who are these “homosexuals?” Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth held a December 5 National Press Club news conference to unveil a video of what took place at the Folsom Street Fair in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district. The video showed naked homosexuals masturbating and having sex in public as children walked down the streets near them. Some were dressed up as animals being led around by leashes. Others were dressed in leather and being whipped. Homosexual pornography was sold openly. See it for yourself here.

Was LaBarbera guilty of a “hate crime” for bringing this perverted behavior to the public’s attention and demanding that Pelosi condemn it? That is what the homosexuals would like you to believe. That is apparently why all of the television media, with the exception of Sean Hannity of Fox News Channel, ignored LaBarbera’s news conference. Who wants to suffer the wrath of the militant homosexuals by focusing attention on what they actually do?

In another indication of a mental disorder, we are being told that waterboarding, which involves pouring water over a terrorist’s face, is torture and should never be used. This mentality is what drove Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives to actually pass a bill banning the practice. During a time of war, can you believe that the House would actually vote to tell terrorists in advance how we will interrogate them? Can you believe that the House would vote to ban a practice that has saved American lives and disrupted terrorist plots against America? The House does this because it has lost sight of who really died on 9/11 and because it puts the “rights” of terrorists above the right to live of ordinary Americans. For all intents and purposes, the House is acting like a terrorist front group.

Similarly, New Jersey politicians have voted to ban capital punishment. Like the measure to ban waterboarding, this can only result in more lives lost. That means that a murder in New Jersey, no matter how vicious, can never be punished by the death penalty. The practical result will be that crimes will go unsolved because police and prosecutors will not be able to threaten to use capital punishment to get information out of criminals. It means criminals will know that no matter who they kill or how many, they will be kept alive at taxpayer expense. Banning the death penalty constitutes open season on law-abiding citizens.

Which brings up the case of Michael Savage, who is being accused of “hate speech” by a Muslim group whose own holy book The Koran is full of hate against Christians, Jews and other unbelievers. Muslims are killing or threatening to kill people around the world over Teddy Bears and cartoons but companies advertising on his Savage Nation radio show are being pressured to stop sponsoring his program because he dares to exercise his First Amendment right of free speech and to criticize Islam.

There is some dispute over which companies have withdrawn advertising from his show. The names of those companies are less important than the campaign itself which is now underway. The purpose of the “Hate Hurts America” group that is now leading the charge against him is to intimidate companies into never advertising on his show. The names of those companies we may never know. This is the insidious danger of this campaign. It will force him off the air eventually—unless we speak up now.

(The) new book, The Death of Talk Radio?, makes the critical point that what we are seeing in the Savage case will become official federal policy if the liberals manage to capture the White House in 2008 and take control of the Federal Communications Commission.

Those determined to kill us are on the offensive, and they have powerful friends in important positions of influence in the media and politics today. It is literally a battle to the death. Our constitutional rights and our lives are at stake. (emphasis added)

The original article can be read at the excellent Accuracy In Media website:
http://www.aim.org/aim_column/5982_0_3_0_C/

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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About the only real export of these Arab states is oil and this oil was discovered and developed by primarily American companies which were then slowly taken over and in effect nationalized by these Arab countries. The ruler of the House of Saud, Ibn Saud, began as a bandit and camel raider in the desert at the turn of the century. American and British patronage turned him into a monarch and turned Saudi Arabia into a wealthy land. The House of Saud turned around and has backed Islamic terrorism and expansionism across Europe, America and the World.

Saudi money drives the global Jihad but Saudi money and oil are really American money and oil. It was American tanks that kept Saddam out of Ridyah in 1992. But it is in fact America that has kept most of the Arab world intact. It was America which forced England, France and Israel to pull out of Egypt in the 1956 Suez Canal War. Egypt rewarded America for this by inviting the Russians in. It was American influence that kept Russia from going into Iran instead of Afghanistan. Today Iran is America's worst enemy. The list goes on and on.

If America and Europe did not exist, does anyone really believe that oil hungry world powers like Russia or China or Japan would have allowed the tinpot bandit Emirs and Princes and Tyrants of the Arab countries to keep control of their oil for very long? It was the long hand of America that protected them all along. For all their wealth and brutality, no Arab state has managed to defeat even tiny Israel, how long would they have lasted against Russia or China?

Not only has America protected their independence, it has even allowed them to nationalize resources developed by American and British companies. The United States has pumped in money and sacrificed the lives of American soldiers to protect them, in return we have received terrorism, oil boycotts and the funding of Islamic expansionism on our own soil.

Rarely has ingratitude been so viciously manifest, but all this goes to show that the Jihad is a self-destructing Jihad. The Jihad is aimed at the West, yet it could not exist without the West. The Islamic terrorists attacking America resemble an angry passenger carving a hole in his lifeboat in the hopes that everyone else in the lifeboat drowns while he somehow swims to safety.

The Arab world has produced nothing in the last century, its technology and its money come from outside. Its literacy level is below that of Sub-Saharan Africa and its labor, from its oil production to its simplest tasks is done by imported foreigners, often Westerners.

The self-destructing Jihad, should it destroy the West, would leave the Middle East barren, without customers for its oil, tourists for its cities, workers for its oil operations and protection for its kingdoms.

If the West responds by cutting immigration and achieving oil independence, then the Middle East will wind up with an economy based on worthless oil and a demographic time bomb turned against itself.

Either way the Jihad loses. The Jihad may succeed in either pushing the world back to the dark ages or at least turn the Middle East into fanatical Mullah and Imam ruled enclaves, but it won't create a new Islamic civilization, only chaos and dark ages. In Iraq and Gaza, the Jihad quickly degenerated into Muslims killing Muslims. This is nothing new, the Jihad in the end has always turned against fellow Muslims.

When Muslims in the West wage Jihad, these engineers and doctors also attack the very system that provides them with a generous income and generates the technology and resources that makes their profession possible. When Muslims in the Middle East wage Jihad, they attack their best customers and the source of their protection and wealth. One way or another the Jihad is engineered to kill the Goose with the Golden Egg and is literally a suicide Jihad, because its success would destroy the very sources of that Jihad.

Original article: www.sultanknish.blogspot.com/2007/12/self-destructing-jihad.html

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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The sad snake oil sold to the American people is that a lawsuit is the economic equivalent of winning the lottery. They are told, and believe, that for every wrong there is a remedy and that courts are simply tools for the enrichment of those who have suffered some disappointment. As a result, courts throughout the nation are clogged with anxious plaintiffs complaining of simple slights that should never have seen a courtroom. A recent case was filed in San Diego by an electrician who got into an argument with a co-worker and was dismissed with a common epithet comprised of two words, the second of which was "you." It seems the poor dear experienced extreme emotional distress from this egregious act and asked for court intervention to relieve his suffering.

Though the case was dismissed, it consumed court and attorney time and resources – and is symptomatic of the resort to courts for civil relief for the slightest of insults. It arises at least in part from our culture of victimhood and the plaintiff's bar's success at squeezing ridiculous results out of juries. It comes, too, from the Left's success in getting the American people to buy the idea that companies should pay when someone is annoyed, irrespective of whether or not the companies have done anything wrong. And so plaintiffs roll the dice and see if they can cash in, encouraged by mobs of plaintiff's lawyers by promises of undeserved riches.

At the same time, the revolution wrought by Supreme Court jurisprudence in the 1950s and '60s convinced the public that they, by gosh, have rights. The Court found in the penumbras of the Constitution newly minted rights and issued attenuated opinions enshrining protections never contemplated by the Founders. A nation that freely accepted the death penalty at its founding suddenly discovered that it might violate the prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment." Put aside the fact that the Congress that passed the amendment making that prohibition existed at a time when the death penalty was in full and frequent use throughout the land; a fact that did not seem to trouble those who passed the prohibition and who saw no contradiction in the act.

Criminal defense lawyers pressed ever more creative Constitutional theories and suggested inventive new remedies for their violation. So it was that criminals were set free by courts on the flimsiest of grounds to further engage in their predatory acts. The unsurprising result was an explosion of crime in the late '60s and throughout the '70s, as those inclined to criminality concluded that they were unlikely to be caught, less likely to be convicted, and still less likely to be punished if they were.

This prompted in the advocates of expanded readings of Constitutional rights no word of protest from their lofty perches high above the mean streets the citizenry had to navigate. It was easy to self-righteously suggest that this was an appeal to the best in us when they paid no direct consequence for it. Those paying the highest price were, as usual, the poor and most vulnerable who suffered a virtual holocaust of crime because modern Constitutional theory encouraged increased criminality. That is the trouble with idealism unleavened by experience and common sense. It is easy for a judge to let an obvious criminal free when protected by bailiffs and metal detectors in the armed citadels we call "courthouses."

It was only when the public, genuinely outraged by the excesses of a criminal justice system warped by Leftist academic legal theories, rose up in protest and handed votes to every politician who suggested he would fight crime and bring the courts to heal. It is no accident that Republicans who, until the late '60s appeared to be a permanent minority, began their inexorable political assent. They were for the death penalty. They were for determinate sentences. They were for putting the bad guys behind bars and leaving them there. And they were rewarded with votes.

But the impetus to odd Constitutional theory goes on. Today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Boumediene v. Bush, a case bearing on the "rights" of Guantanamo detainees. It is the next in line of a series of cases pressed for the purpose of vindicating odd notions of rights during wartime and the success of which would result in the same geometrical increase in international crime that was the result of the proponents' efforts during the Warren Court era.

The effort is no less than the ambitious attempt to apply all of the attenuated Constitutional theories that resulted in our last major national crime wave to international terrorism. It is an effort to extend American rights to non-Americans committing their crimes far from America against Americans. And it is being sold with same self-regard and self-righteousness that was employed in the '60s: "We are better than that. We must live up to our ideal of equal justice under the law." Equal justice under the law applies to those in the United States and only to those in the United States or subject to its laws.

The immediate question before the Court is whether Congress can oust the courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions. That is hardly a question worth debating. The "checks and balances" Leftists tout in other contexts exist so that each branch can, one way or another, limit the power of the others. Congress has always had the power to oust the federal courts of jurisdiction over matters of controversy. Indeed, the federal courts below the Supreme Court are a matter of grace by Congress, not a mandate of the Constitution. Congress has the power to repeal the various judiciary acts that create them without running afoul of the Constitution, which does not require that they be established.

Although the immediate matter before the Court is the more esoteric one of jurisdiction and Congress's power to limit it, there is no question but that the greater issue is whether American rights extend to other than those in the United States, subject to its laws. It has never been the law of this nation that the rights protected under our Constitution extend to every human being in every place on the globe. Law is a function of the culture in which it takes root. The United States was founded largely by the children of the enlightenment whose lives were informed by the profoundly civilized philosophical project of individual liberty. As a cultural institution, it depends on the underlying assumption that those who inhabit the culture have similar, if not congruent, social values and have bought into the overarching cultural assumptions that give cohesion to their society. Without the embracement of basic cultural and ethical norms, cultural standards will not be achieved by citizens, and the assumptions that make up voluntary obedience to law will not exist.

The fundamental mistake made by those who argue for American rights for Guantanamo detainees is that American law is effective for governing people who share neither American values nor American cultural norms. Law is the governmental imposition of the basic rules of a society. It is about the enforcement of fundamental cultural norms on those who accept an overarching cultural standard. Our treatment of foreign terror suspects is not about our values, it is about theirs. Our values are intact, but our constitutionally protected liberties can extend only to those who accept the basic cultural values that make them work. Those who reject those values do not accept the duties that go with living in the society that embraces them and, without the acceptance of those duties, the protections that accompany them for those who do, give only advantage to those who have no call on that benefit.

It is odd that the very people who argue that President Bush is hopelessly naïve in thinking we can promote democracy in countries that have no historical understanding of it, are the very same people who think that the complicated mechanisms of American law should be set to the wholly unprecedented situation of an inchoate international terrorist effort. The fact is that planted democracy is much more likely to take root than the imposition of American standards of constitutional protection is to serve the very function of law: to protect the innocent.

Extending American due process rights, including habeas corpus, to foreign nationals in time of violent conflict, has not only never been done by any nation at any time, it will lead to nothing but chaos and confusion in our soldiers who will be expected to understand legal norms that most lawyers do not even comprehend. The battlefield is a bad place to test new jurisprudential ideas and it is destructive to the mission. It has been said that the Constitution is not a suicide pact and where you are fighting people who will not be bound by the cultural values that serve as the basis for law, extending the protections of that law is not only inappropriate, it is wrong-headed.

That is why the plaintiffs in Boumediene are wrong. The cases are legion in which court after court, including the United States Supreme Court, has concluded that American Constitutional rights are enjoyed by Americans and those who commit crimes in our country. That is the conclusion of Johnson v. Eisentrager, a 1950 United States Supreme Court case in which it was decided that German detainees at the end of World War II were not entitled to habeas corpus. In ruling, the Court observed that extending the right to habeas corpus to foreign nationals in foreign countries would "hamper the war effort and bring aid and comfort to the enemy." Just so.

We live in a dangerous time with dangerous and determined enemies not tethered to formal governments. As such, they are not entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions. We have extended to them far more rights than any nation ever has enemy combatants. They have contested hearings before military judges; the same types of tribunals our military men and women get when accused of crimes in uniform. They have a review right in a federal court. For those who say "we are better than that" as if, somehow, extending less than the full protection of the Constitution of the United States to those not entitled to any of its rights is less than we should do, we must ask: how many nations provide due process to their own citizens as great as those we do these detainees? Why should these detainees receive more rights than our own soldiers?

Who, among nations, is in a position to criticize our handling of these prisoners? What nation would extend the protections we do? Where, then, does anyone get the idea that we lose our respect among nations when we provide more rights to these detainees than any of them would? Any nation or national leader who suggests that we are betraying our ideals in this regard is simply playing for political advantage. And, any such leader should be challenged to meet even these standards in his own country.

In the end, our treatment of these detainees is more civilized than they have any right to expect and certainly more humane than they would receive at the hands of any other nation. I spoke with a nationally known liberal radio talk show host who vigorously disagreed with my position in this regard, accusing me of being inhumane. When I pointed out that if we want to keep terrorists from being released by federal courts to terrorize again, the only alternative would be for soldiers to kill rather than capture them; he said that that would be more acceptable. So much for liberal compassion.

The original article can be found at http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/

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