Diversity is in the Constitution

Justices are getting more blatant with their disregard for the Constitution. They used to at least have some circumvented explanation as to why something is Constitutional. Now, they are making up stuff. Since when is diversity in the Constitution, Mr Kennedy?

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected diversity plans in two major school districts that take race into account in assigning students but left the door open for using race in limited circumstances.

The decision in cases affecting schools in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle could imperil similar plans in hundreds of districts nationwide, and it further restricts how public school systems may attain racial diversity.

The court split, 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts announcing the court's judgment. The court's four liberal justices dissented.

The districts "failed to show that they considered methods other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals," Roberts said.

Yet Justice Anthony Kennedy would not go as far as the other four conservative justices, saying in a concurring opinion that race may be a component of school plans designed to achieve diversity.
To the extent that Roberts' opinion could be interpreted to foreclose the use of race in any circumstance, Kennedy said, "I disagree with that reasoning."

Yahoo Manipulates

The Yahoo Headline: Republicans block bill making it easier to form labor unions

What the bill does is eliminate the secret ballot of employees needed to unionize. A union is no harder to form with a secret ballot if the majority of employees are interested. The only way the bill makes it easier to form unions is that union officals can see who is voting against the union and intimidate them.

Yahoo makes it out to be that Republicans are mean.

WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked a bill that would allow labor unions to organize workplaces without a secret ballot election.

Democrats were unable to get the 60 votes needed to force consideration of the Employee Free Choice Act, ending organized labor's chance to win its top legislative priority from Congress.

The bill would require employers to recognize unions after being presented union cards signed by a majority of eligible workers on their payrolls. Under current labor law, a company can demand a secret ballot election supervised by the federal government after being presented the union cards....

Freedom, Not Climate, is at Risk

I just wish more politicans were like this. Leave it to the Czechs who have finally found freedom to quickly see when people are trying to take it away. At the end there is a link to some Q&A he did with internet reader. I love his brashness.


Freedom, not climate, is at risk
By Vaclav Klaus

We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough – irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent – for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now.

In the past year, Al Gore’s so-called “documentary” film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain’s – more or less Tony Blair’s – Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced.

The author Michael Crichton stated it clearly: “the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda”. I feel the same way, because global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem. It requires courage to oppose the “established” truth, although a lot of people – including top-class scientists – see the issue of climate change entirely differently. They protest against the arrogance of those who advocate the global warming hypothesis and relate it to human activities.

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.

The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.

Does it make any sense to speak about warming of the Earth when we see it in the context of the evolution of our planet over hundreds of millions of years? Every child is taught at school about temperature variations, about the ice ages, about the much warmer climate in the Middle Ages. All of us have noticed that even during our life-time temperature changes occur (in both directions).

Due to advances in technology, increases in disposable wealth, the rationality of institutions and the ability of countries to organise themselves, the adaptability of human society has been radically increased. It will continue to increase and will solve any potential consequences of mild climate changes.

I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”.

The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.

As a witness to today’s worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:
■Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures
■Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided
■Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants
■Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority
■Instead of speaking about “the environment”, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour
■Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction
■Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.

Q&A with Klaus

•At a somewhat deeper methodological level, I have to say that market mechanism is nobody’s policy instrument. It reminds me of the old communist days again. The issue was: market or central planning. The central planners, however, wanted to have market – in their hands – as a policy instrument. Do we have to live under communism to understand that?

•To say that “the supporters of capitalism demand that they are free to dump their waste on their neighbours lawns without consequence” has the beauty of communist propaganda I had a chance to “enjoy” during the first 48 years of my life.

•It is very popular but cheap to blame “large world powers”. I don’t do it. I know many, very small European “powers” which are more environmentalist than most “large world powers”. The problem is that some politicians – of both large and small countries – are victims of environmentalism and use it for their own personal benefits.

•Environmentalism is indeed a vehicle for bringing us socialist government at the global level. Again, my life in communism makes me oversensitive in this respect. The argumentation of various environmentalists is very similar to what we used to know in the past.

•Environmentalism, not preservation of nature (and of environment), is a leftist ideology. Some people, who pretend to be on the right, bought into it as well – to my great regret.

•There are huge material (very pecuniary) and even bigger psychological incentives for politicians and their bureaucratic fellow-travellers to support environmentalism. It gives them power. This is exactly what they are searching for. It gives them power to organise, regulate, manipulate the rest of us. There is nothing altruistic in their environmentalist stances.

Darfur caused by Global Warming?

You've got to be kidding me. We finally got rid of Kofi, but now Ki-moonbat thinks the murder in Darfur is caused by global warming? Where do we get these guys?

In reality, it's a cop-out. He doesn't really want to deal with the problem. He doesn't want to tell Sudan are in violation of resolutions. He doesn't want to tell them that the jihad isn't acceptable.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the slaughter in Darfur was triggered by global climate change and that more such conflicts may be on the horizon, in an article published Saturday.
"The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change," Ban said in a Washington Post opinion column.

UN statistics showed that rainfall declined some 40 percent over the past two decades, he said, as a rise in Indian Ocean temperatures disrupted monsoons.

"This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming," the South Korean diplomat wrote.

"It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought," Ban said in the Washington daily.

The Dyslexia Fraud?

I think are some who have legitimately had dyslexia, but it's been overdiagnosed for the said reasons. Adding to that list is probably ADD or ADHD. I'm sure there are some legimate cases of ADD, but it's overdiagnosed, because no one wants to say that someone is just a bad parent with a bratty kid. They blame a condition and medicate the child as a substitute for a swift kick in the ass.

Daily Mail - UK --Dyslexia is a social fig leaf used by middle-class parents who fear their children will be labelled as low achievers, a professor has claimed.

Julian Elliott, a leading educational psychologist at Durham University, says he has found no evidence to identify dyslexia as a medical condition after more than 30 years of research.

"There is a huge stigma attached to low intelligence," he said.

"After years of working with parents, I have seen how they don't want their child to be considered lazy, thick or stupid.

"If they get called this medically diagnosed term, dyslexic, then it is a signal to all that it's not to do with intelligence."

He added: "There are all sorts of reasons why people don't read well but we can't determine why that is. Dyslexia, as a term, is becoming meaningless."

One in ten people in the UK - including 375,000 schoolchildren - has been diagnosed with dyslexia.

The condition is said to impair short-term memory and the ability to read, write, spell and do maths.

Supporters of the condition argue that dyslexics are intelligent people who have difficulties processing information and need extra help and time than others who are poor readers.

But Professor Elliott has claimed that the symptoms of dyslexia - such as clumsiness and letter reversal - are similar to those seen in those who simply cannot read.

He argues that the condition should be rediagnosed as a reading difficulty.

His comments provoked fury among dyslexia campaigners.

John Rack, head of research and development at the charity Dyslexia Action, denied that the disability was a middle-class phenomenon.

He told The Times: "There is ample evidence that dyslexia exists across the spectrum and the argument that there is no consistent means of identifying it is one cited by people who don't know enough about the subject."

However, other experts have suggested that parents are putting their children forward for reading ability assessments to "get them off the hook".

Dr Michael Rice, a dyslexia and literacy expert at Cambridge University, said: "There is a sense of justification when children are diagnosed.

"It gets them off the hook of great embarrassment and personal inadequacy."

According to Professor Elliott, dyslexic university students are gaining an unfair advantage by getting extra time for their studies and many are getting diagnosed simply to get up to £10,000 worth of equipment including laptops and extra books.

University lecturers have complained about students "milking the system" by pretending they have the condition.

One lecturer who teaches in the South-East said:

"On one degree course I teach, about one quarter of the students get help with their coursework and other assistance because they have this label. You become quite cynical."

The number of students who receive disability allowances at university has risen to a record 35,500 at a cost of £78.4million a year.

Immigration Amnesty Again

Last year around this time, we were having the same debate about amnesty for illegals. I wrote about how some Republicans want to treat labor as a commodity. Again, the amnesty is back. Bush has teamed with Kennedy to create a monsterous bill. For many conservatives, this is the last straw of support for Bush.

The Wall St. Journal's editorial board has been notably in favor of illegal immigration. Since the Wall St. Journal likes to talk about economics, we will put the debate in a language they can understand. The Wall Street Journal and some Republican politicans have ignored both the explicit and implicit costs of the amnesty bill.

Explicity, legalizing millions of unlawful aliens will increase costs to the rest of the American populace. This includes the added strain on health care facilities and our ailing social security system whom the illegals would have claims to.

Implicity, there is added risk to society when illegals with criminal records are also given citizenship. The US bureaucracy will also have a mere 24 hours to perform a background check on illegals applying for the Z-visa. Since it is unlikely that the system can properly do background checks in such short order for so many people, the risk of violent criminals obtaining visas will increase expotentially.

The immigration bill will also produce negative externalities. The 12.5 million illegals are a greater population than all but 5 of the large states. Large enclaves of Hispanic communities with little pressure to adopt American values will lead to the balkanization of America.

Finally, the often-quoted 12.5 million illegals could rapidly increase after the bill's passage. As the benefits for crossing the border illegally increase and the risks decrease, the supply of illegals will also increase.

The Velvet Mafia

So Bush's appointment to be surgeon general is causing "contreversy" because he wrote that being gay is unnatural and unhealthy.

Let's ask, is it natural? No. Is it healthy? The AIDS epidemic was widely spread, how?

As for his church activities, I thought a person’s religious beliefs and church activity was a personal choice and was not to be factored into his or her fitness for office?

I think at the end of the day Bush yanks the nominee because he is afraid of the Velvet Mafia.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - President Bush's nominee for surgeon general, Kentucky cardiologist Dr. James Holsinger, has come under fire from gay rights groups for voting to expel a lesbian pastor from the United Methodist Church and writing in 1991 that gay sex is unnatural and unhealthy.

Also, Holsinger helped found a Methodist congregation that, according to gay rights activists, believes homosexuality is a matter of choice and can be "cured."...

Pre-empting Michael Moore

Instead of waiting to respond to Moore's new socialistmentary, two filmmakers made a documentary about the splendors of Canadian Healthcare:

The tagline, which I found humorous: "If you think healthcare is expensive, wait until it's free"

American problems: The ambulance ride wasn't covered.
Canadian problems: Dying from cancer because your surgery was repeatably postponed until it had become inoperable.

Who has worse problems?

Selfish Tuberculosis Flyer

Some comments on the TB flyer:

1. He's an trial lawyer. He's probably sued many people for lesser negligence.
   
2. He knew the risk of possibly infecting many others with this. That other people on the flight could get infected with this horrible strain of TB, but he decided to ignore it.
   
3. If the man was so innocent, why did he try to sneak back into the US via Canada?
   
4. Was the wedding in Greece so important? He risked so many people so she could
   
5. He is trying to turn himself into a victim.
   
6. Bottom line: He's probably so narsassitc that he thinks he is above everyone else. One set of laws for everyone else, but he is exempt. Typical trial lawyer.

An Atlanta attorney quarantined with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis apologized to his fellow plane passengers in an interview aired Friday, and said he was told he wasn't contagious or a threat to anyone.

"I feel awful," Andrew Speaker said, speaking through a mask with ABC's "Good Morning America" at his hospital room in Denver. "I've lived in this state of constant fear and anxiety and exhaustion for a week now, and to think that someone else is now feeling that, I wouldn't want anyone to feel that way.

"I don't expect those people to ever forgive me. I just hope they understand that I truly never meant them any harm."

Speaker, 31, said he, his doctors and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all knew he had TB before he flew to Europe for his wedding and honeymoon last month. But he said he was told that he wasn't contagious or a danger to anyone. Officials said they would rather he didn't fly but didn't forbid it, he said.

.... Speaker, his new wife and her 8-year-old daughter were already in Europe when the CDC contacted him and told him to turn himself in immediately at a clinic there and not take another commercial flight.

Speaker said he felt as if the CDC had suddenly "abandoned him." He said he believed if he didn't get to the specialized clinic in Denver, he would die.

"Before I left, I knew that it was made clear to me, that in order to fight this, I had one shot, and that was going to be in Denver," he said. If doctors in Europe tried to treat him and it went wrong, he said, "it's very real that I could have died there."

Even though U.S. officials had put Speaker on a warning list, he caught a flight to Montreal and then drove across the U.S. border on May 24 at Champlain, N.Y. A border inspector who checked him disregarded a computer warning to stop Speaker, officials said Thursday.