From the New York Post:
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Add another name to the ever-growing list of environmental hypocrites: that of Barack Obama.
The president celebrated the annual Earth Day festivities by jetting aboard Air Force One from Washington to Des Moines, Iowa, and from there he choppered over to the town of Newton — delivering remarks at a plant that manufactures wind-turbine towers. . . . The sum total: at least 9,116 gallons of fuel . . . That’s not very green, is it? [AO: This one’s easy. According to my dictionary, a hypocrite is “a person who feigns some desirable or publicly approved attitude, esp. one whose private life, opinions, or statements belie his or her public statements.” In other words, strike Obama’s name of f the list of environmental hypocrites. Why? Because refraining from using Air Force One on Earth Day would have been an attempt to feign a desirable or publicly approved attitude! Phew! That was close. Good thing I had my handy dictionary.
Of course, that is not to say that Obama is anti-environment. However, as president he, basically, has no choice but to use Air Force One. Are there real alternatives? Now, after recognizing that the president of the United States has to use Air force One each time he flies, suggesting he avoid using it on Earth Day would simply be a stunt . . . in other words, hypocrisy. ]
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Read the full opinion HERE.
From the Chicago Tribune:
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When the Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote his epic, “The Gulag Archipelago,” some Americans read it to measure the gulf between the brute savagery of communism and the principled standards of free, civilized nations. But apparently some Americans took it as a helpful how-to volume.
Where would CIA officers have gotten the idea to extract cooperation from detainees by keeping them awake for as long as 180 hours at a time, or more than a week? Maybe from the jailers in Solzhenitsyn’s grim account, who used the method on a mass scale.
But American intelligence officials also learned something from the Soviets about manipulating language to conceal reality. When our enemies use methods like this, they amount to torture. . . .
But some people don’t care whether these methods qualify as torture as long as they yield useful information — as Hayden and former Vice President Dick Cheney attest they do. Whether that’s true is hard for an outsider to know.
The Bush administration claimed that the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed helped foil a planned 2002 attack on Los Angeles — forgetting that he wasn’t captured until 2003. Maybe we’ll get a better answer if the administration grants Cheney his request that it declassify material supporting his case, as it should. . . .
And if effectiveness is the only gauge, why even debate whether these techniques fit the definition of torture? . . . [AO: We encourage our readers to read the entire opinion at ChicagoTribune.com]
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Read the full opinion HERE.
From the New York Daily News:
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You can rest assured that back in the day, no pirate ever came as happily to court as did Smilin’ Abduwali, the Jolly Roger of today’s brigands.
. . . President Lincoln gave Gordon all of three days to get his affairs in order before the gallows. Meanwhile, Smilin’ Abduwali has a mom in Somalia, who says her son is an innocent dupe, and a radical New York lawyer, Ron Kuby, who says the Navy may have arrested S.A. in violation of the “principles of truce in warfare.”
Sort of high-seas Miranda warnings. No wonder Abduwali’s smilin’. [AO: I must confess that I don’t understand the point of this opinion. It seems to suggest that the guy is smiling because he’s going to court and that we should hang him to wipe the smile off his face. Am I reading the opinion correctly?
Some of you will recall that I’ve argued on this site that capturing and trying pirates my not have the deterrent effect some conservative commentators have suggested. Well, there you go. Maybe if he is hanged, drawn and quartered, then we’ll get the deterrent effect they want. ]
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Read the full opinion HERE.
From the New York Post:
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ONE of the most important events of our lifetimes may have just transpired. A federal agency has decided that it has the power to regulate everything, including the air you breathe.
Nominally, the Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement last Friday only applies to new-car emissions. But almost everyone agrees that it opens the door to regulating, well, everything. [AO: NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. This “event” did not just transpire. Here is a relevant quote from Wikipedia describing the Supreme Court case that made this decision possible:
Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), is a U.S. Supreme Court case decided 5-4 in which twelve states and several cities of the United States brought suit against the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to force that federal agency to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as pollutants.
See? Twelve states and several cities SUED the EPA to FORCE that agency to REGULATE carbon dioxide. The states and cites WON. Which means the EPA did not exactly have a choice here. The “event” you refer to is EPA coming to grips, two years later, with this Supreme Court decision. Yet, you make it sound as if while no one was looking the EPA made a power grab that even surprised the White House. ]
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Read the full opinion HERE.