Do you think it is time for the house leaders to apologize to Joe Wilson?

What do you think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxHKSHvMR…

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2…

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/090…

Runaway Debt Must Be Stopped Now

Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=515428

12/15/2009

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Fiscal Errors: The U.S. government's unprecedented spending splurge, with no end in sight, is creating a mountain of debt that endangers both our economy and way of life. Can something be done about it?

Anyone who reads IBD knows we're not doomsayers. Sometimes, in fact, we've been chided for cockeyed optimism in the face of even the gloomiest prognostications. Our faith in America's resilient economy, the world's largest and most creative, and in the productive people who make it go, was reason enough.

That said, we face a rather stark fact today: The current path for U.S. debt is unsustainable.

Our $14 trillion economy is more than three times bigger than the next largest in the world. But our debt will soon surpass even the bloated level of WWII, when we were literally fighting for our lives and freedoms with a weak economy struggling to emerge from the Great Depression.

In just the last year alone, according to a report this week from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), total U.S. public debt has jumped to $7.6 trillion, or 53% of GDP, from $5.7 trillion, or 41% of GDP.

Also this week, to accommodate its out-of-control spending, Congress will vote to lift the U.S. debt limit by $1.8 trillion — to almost $14 trillion. Why now? They don't want to do it in 2010, an election year.

And, yes, the size of the debt does matter. By 2018, at current spending trends, debt as a share of GDP will reach 85%. In 2022, it will hit 100%. And it will keep rising at least until 2038, reaching 200%.

At that level, our fast-growing, high-innovation, high-wage economy begins grinding to a permanent slowdown. The accumulated debt will become a millstone around our necks. Fleeter, less-indebted competitors in the developing world will sprint right past us.

If you don't think so, just look at Japan. It was the world's fastest-growing developed economy for most of the postwar era. But it stumbled in the late '80s and began a debt-financed binge of "stimulus" packages in the 1990s and early 2000s. Today, it has the worst of all worlds: a 200% of GDP debt load, and low or no growth.

Recent debt debacles in Dubai and Greece, both of which are near bankruptcy, show what can happen to nations when they spend too much. Now, we're on the same path.

It's no mystery why this happens. "Government borrowing reduces resources available for private investment, leading to lower productivity, wages, and economic growth," noted the Heritage Foundation in a recent study. So, yes, all this debt does matter.

But debt doesn't create itself. During this decade, total nominal federal spending has soared 97%, or nearly 10% a year — well in excess of the estimated 60% the economy grew during the same time.

You might think this would be cause for alarm. But you'd be wrong. The Senate just passed another $1.1 trillion pork-filled spending bill — a 12% spending hike — with little, if any, thought toward what it will mean for the future of public finance.

Some might take comfort in the creation of a new Bipartisan Fiscal Task Force to address the nation's "long-term budget crisis." Unfortunately, nine Democrats who co-sponsored that bipartisan budget panel voted for the 12% spending hike.

As Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute put it: "Fixating on the deficit allows politicians to pull a bait-and-switch, since they can raise taxes, claim they are solving the problem, when all they are doing is replacing debt-financed spending with tax-financed spending."

It's true that a lot of federal spending is on automatic pilot. Programs such as Medicare and Social Security grow as the population ages. At the same time, the economy grows less dynamic.

But at some point, we all have to ask ourselves how much we want an inefficient government to do, and how much we can do for ourselves. We can't have everything and still have a strong economy.

Those who propose raising taxes, rather than cutting spending, should understand: The level of taxes needed to pay for the massive expansion in expenditures expected over the next half-century would bankrupt our nation.

The Tax Foundation recently estimated that tax rates would have to nearly triple to close our fiscal gap. That's not possible without crashing our economy, possibly for good.

The prospect of turning the next generation of Americans, those now in childhood and those yet to be born, into virtual tax slaves to pay for our fiscal irresponsibility is immoral. The time to cut spending is now — not later.

Less Health Care for More Money By Ann Coulter

Source: http://townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2009/12/16/less_health_care_for_more_money?page=full&comments=true

December 16, 2009

The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a column about John Brodniak of Oregon, who developed a cavernous hemangioma, causing him great pain as blood leaks into his brain.

According to Kristof, Brodniak can't get medical help because we don't have universal health care. Senators who vote against ObamaCare, Kristof said, are morally equivalent to someone who would walk past a man "writhing in pain on the sidewalk."

In another article in the Times, William Yardley wrote about Melvin Tsosies -- also of Oregon -- who ended up with $200,000 in medical bills after having a heart attack.

As of March 2008, Yardley reported, Tsosies was waiting to find out if he would win the Oregon lottery for health insurance. But with 600,000 uninsured state residents and a "universal" health care program with only enough money to pay for about 24,000 of them, Tsosies is more likely to win a Powerball lottery.

How can this be happening? Oregon already has "universal health care"! (Probably just a coincidence, but isn't Oregon also the only state with physician-assisted suicide?)

Once again forgetting about the existence of the Internet, the Times neglects to mention its own erstwhile enthusiasm for Oregon's universal health care plan, introduced back in 1990.

Back then, the Times published an editorial titled "Oregon's Brave Medical Experiment," hailing this technocratic monstrosity as an example of "hardheaded compassion" designed to make "health coverage available to many more families."

Ron Wyden -- then a congressman from Oregon, now a U.S. senator at the forefront of pushing "universal health care" onto the nation -- said: "This is a strong dramatic step toward universal access of health care." He predicted, "[T]his is going to be copied everywhere."

No wonder Wyden is such an ardent proponent of national health care -- it will force states that didn't adopt these idiotic universal health care schemes to bail out the ones that did.

Liberals cite medical horror stories from the very states they once cheered for enacting universal health care in order to argue for a national health care plan that will wreck the entire nation's medical care the same way liberal states already wrecked their own medical care.

Only Democrats could propose fixing one Bernie Madoff-style scam with an even bigger Bernie Madoff-style scam.

Maybe when national universal health care fails, we'll be able to go international. Then interplanetary -- then interstellar! Why should I pay for my gall bladder surgery when some Venusian could?

Eighty-five percent of Americans are happy with their health care, but Democrats have a plan to make it worse for more money. As a bonus, national health care will add trillions of dollars to the national debt, and your insurance rates will skyrocket.

Democrats are being utterly disingenuous to say that you won't have to leave your current plan under national health care. Maybe, but it won't be your choice: Your employer will be making that decision for you.

Recall that one of the big selling points of national health care is that it is supposed to reduce costs for American businesses. The only way national health care will make American companies "more competitive" is if they dump their employees into the public health care system.

It's so weird! We expected X number of people to show up for health care and instead 75X showed up! Yeah, just like every other government program in the history of the world.

Ten years from now, we'll be talking about cost overruns of $6 trillion -- but by then, national health care will be an untouchable "third rail" of politics, just as Medicare is now. (Ironically, injuries sustained from actually touching the third rail won't be covered under ObamaCare.)

As with Medicare, voters will be terrified to go back to even the wisp of a free market system we have now, afraid that they'll never be able to get health insurance without the government providing it. Having been dragged unwillingly into the government plan, how will a 58-year-old be able to leave the public system and get insurance on the free market?

Speaking of which, how many of you are planning to retire on your Social Security benefits? Just you there, with the shopping cart full of cans?

The only solution will be for the government to keep running up gigantic deficits and raising taxes on "the rich," which, in turn, will stifle job creation and economic growth in a phenomenon known to economists as "the Carter years."

In addition to forcing Americans into dealing with surly government workers in order to obtain medical care, sooner or later, there's no free lunch. (And if government X-rays are anything like the photos the DMV takes for your license, count me out. I don't want my lungs looking like they had a bad hair day.)

Even if national health care puts the screws to doctors and pharmaceutical companies by reimbursing them below cost -- so all future doctors will soon resemble DMV employees and no new drugs will ever be invented -- the government is still going to have to cut services and pay for the system with massive tax hikes.

Which is exactly what happened with Oregon's "Brave Medical Experiment."


Ann Coulter is a columnist and author of Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault On America.

Here Comes The Sun

Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=515430

12/15/2009

Global Warming: Drip by drip, like a glacier melting in the sun, the claim that man is changing the climate is dissolving into irrelevance. The recent findings of Swiss researchers expose another hole.

Former Vice President Al Gore has for years warned that man-made global warming is melting the world's glaciers — a tactic commonly used by alarmists who want to whip up hysteria. Swiss researchers, however, have presented evidence that weakens the argument.

Scientists at Zurich's Federal Institute of Technology have found that solar activity caused Alpine glaciers to melt in the 1940s at rates faster than today's pace, even though it's warmer now.

The study found that the sun in the 1940s was 8% stronger than average and far more powerful than it is today. It also concluded that solar activity was weaker from the 1950s to the 1980s, an era in which the glaciers advanced.

The Swiss researchers are spinning their own work, saying that the evidence doesn't mean the public can stop worrying about man-made warming. But their finding validates other researchers who have said solar activity has a far greater impact on temperatures than human CO2 emissions.

This report from Zurich reminds us of another myth perpetrated by Gore. In his Academy Award-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," he contends the snowcap on Mount Kilimanjaro has retreated because of human greenhouse-gas emissions. Yet scientists have been telling a different story.

They say the melting on the 19,340-foot mountain has been going on for more than a century, beginning long before man accelerated CO2 emissions. They also report that temperatures at the top of Kilimanjaro never fall below freezing, so the reason for snowcap loss has to be due to one or more causes not related to temperature. A lack of snowfall is likely one of those.

Just as the Swiss researchers tried to soft-pedal their findings, the scientists who have studied Kilimanjaro also refuse to let the narrative unravel. They say the facts about the snowcap shouldn't be used to raise doubts about the official line that man is warming the planet. Nothing to see here, they say in effect, so move on.

Another sign that the alarmists' claims are falling apart is the statement made Monday by Gore at the global warming conference in Copenhagen: "Some of the models suggest ... that there is a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years."

While the chance that sea ice will disappear that soon is virtually nil, there's a 100% certainty that Gore was wrong.

"It's unclear to me how this figure was arrived at," said Wieslav Maslowski, a scientist from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School whose work Gore had misused. "I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this."

It wasn't the first time Gore has crossed into fantasyland. Last month, he announced on the "Tonight Show" that "the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees," when in fact it's no more than 9,000 degrees Celsius and might be only 4,000. Not even the sun is "several million degrees." Its surface — based on Gore's criteria — is a cool 5,550 to 6,000 degrees Celsius.

Then there's his movie, so full of scientific errors — at least nine of them — that a British court two years ago ruled it could be shown in secondary schools only when notes to balance its political bias were also presented in class.

Despite his poor stewardship of the facts and his refusal to debate the issue, Gore is still the go-to guy for most journalists who cover global warming. He's still identified as the climate guru who actually has something to contribute to the conversation.

The truth, though, is that Gore and so many others gathered in Copenhagen are propagandists. They know that the way to arrange the world economy to fit their preferences and require lifestyle changes in developed nations is to demand that governments do something about the environment.

Why are liberals so angry?

Why are liberals so angry?

Will breaking things down to its simplest level be the best way to solve this dilemma? All intelligent people know this to be true. I read this simple story somewhere, some time ago, that shows the basic differences between liberals and conservatives.

The story used to be: The ant (the conservative) works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.The grasshopper (the liberal) thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays (drinks, smokes and does drugs) all the summer long.Here comes winter and the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper, however, has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold. MORAL OF THIS STORY IS: Be responsible for yourself.

THE CONTEMPORARY VERSION OF THIS SAME STORY IS: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying in supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays all the summer long. Here comes the winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving. NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, and PBS show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

Americans are stunned by the sharp contrast. A picture is worth a thousand words. How can this be, that in a country as wealthy as ours, can this poor grasshopper be allowed to suffer so much? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody sympathizes and tears flow when they sing, “It's Not Easy Being Green.” Acorn stages a demonstration in front of the ant 's house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome,” while Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group curse God for the grasshopper's dilemma.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid complain in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs, and having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar Van Jones. The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while in the government house, which just happened to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he didn’t maintain it. The ant had disappeared into the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood. MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010 and 2012.

Can I ask what you do for this country? I'm not saying you don't work or pay taxes, but so many liberals just take and take and take and think it’s their right.


I used to think it was just that Liberals are immature. But a disturbing pattern was noticed over and over and over: most Liberals can't even engage in civil discourse, and when they are confronted with positions that don't match theirs, they lash out like crazed pit bulls. This oddity was noticed for a long time, and like others before me have concluded that Liberalism really is a mental disorder based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions.

“Contemporary liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded,” paraphrasing Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, "The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness." "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."

While political activists on the other side of the spectrum have made similar observations, Rossiter boasts professional credentials and a life virtually free of activism and links to "the vast right-wing conspiracy." For more than 35 years he has diagnosed and treated more than 1,500 patients as a board-certified clinical psychiatrist and examined more than 2,700 civil and criminal cases as a board-certified forensic psychiatrist. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago.Ronald Reagan once said, "The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.”

Reagan had hit upon something really important and eye opening! Liberals seem to have a very, very tenuous grasp of things. Therefore, they figuratively dig their claws in and fight tooth and nail against anything that doesn't fit their viewpoint of the world.


The Liberal mind is about as stable as a house of cards. On some levels, they realize that confronting reality will destroy their entire view of the world, much like someone in the 1200's finally realizing the shocking truth that the world isn't flat, after all.


Imagine how difficult it was for frightened sailors to finally accept the truth: they lived frightened lives unnecessarily. The horizon wasn't full of sea serpents. There was no edge of the world.

Conservatives absolutely baffle and exasperate Liberals. Why? Because Conservatives appear to have solid beliefs while the Liberal is lucky if he can formulate some vague, hazy philosophy of things.


When a Conservative argues with a Liberal, the Liberal feels he must lash out for fear of discovering that his whole imaginary world is just that: fiction. So, Liberals preach "tolerance", but only tolerance for their viewpoints. Anything else is heresy. Just try confronting a Liberal with the facts about global warming and he'll practically start foaming at the mouth.


The mind of the Liberal cannot acknowledge that a Conservative is right because the fuzzy Liberal mind is like a shaky house of cards. If the Liberal realizes he's wrong about one thing, it totally destroys their whole imagined reality he has constructed for himself. So when Liberals scream like threatened children when you talk about FOX News, or Rush Limbaugh, it is because their brains are not wired to accept contradictory information.


Liberals don’t get their information from the left and the right, putting their beliefs to the test by checking if they are based on fact and not on conjecture or psychological construction. Liberals cannot do this. It would destroy their carefully crafted dream world existence.


What do you think?


Joseph Michael Wasik

Why is Sarah being viciously attacked?

It’s been over a year since the election of 2008 and yet Sarah Palin cannot show up in the news without a barrage of vicious attacks from the media. Although she is no longer a candidate for vice president, the vitriol continues to spew over the release of her book, "Going Rogue: An American Life."

Many think the anti-Sarah sentiment stems from her solid pro-life position but I would like to explore reasons that go way beyond her feelings about abortion.

As you look back in history to the late 1960s and 1970s, you see a wave of feminist ideals being sold to women, including the notion that they needed to delay motherhood to get ahead in their careers. Many women bought into this belief that giving birth and career advancement didn’t mix. So what happened? Many women chose the birth control route, delaying marriage and childbirth well into their thirties and even forties. Their biological clocks ticked away and they sacrificed the most fertile time in their lives for career advancement and what they thought would be true happiness.

Some, when faced with an unplanned pregnancy they believed would interfere with their careers, chose the abortion route. They sacrificed the life of their unborn child for their own personal career advancement.

Now enter Sarah Palin, a woman with a husband, children and a high-profile career. Yes, this hockey Mom went from school board, to mayor, to governor to a vice presidential candidate! And her own unplanned pregnancy ended not in the hands of an abortionist, but in the loving embrace of the Palin family.


Now when the women who sacrificed motherhood either by abortion or birth control look at Sarah, they can’t stand her, even if they can’t explain why. Because she was able to have a family and a career, they see her as having the best of both worlds. They see, in this confident, self-possessed, accomplished woman, surrounded by a loving family, everything they gave up.

In a nation that has lost more than 50 million children to abortion, we have millions of women who have these repressed feelings. Many have suffered silently from these negative consequences since their abortion. As a father of a murdered unborn baby, I know first-hand about this trauma and I invite anyone still dealing with this pain, shame and regret of abortion to visit www.SilentNoMoreAwareness.org.

The next time you hear Sarah being attacked so viciously, consider that it might be because we are a nation that has been wounded by abortion.

What do you think?

Copenhagen's political science By Sarah Palin

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/08/AR2009120803402.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

December 9, 2009

With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue.

"Climate-gate," as the e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politicized scientific circle -- the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worse.

The e-mails reveal that leading climate "experts" deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to "hide the decline" in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. What's more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd. Some scientists had strong doubts about the accuracy of estimates of temperatures from centuries ago, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate.

This scandal obviously calls into question the proposals being pushed in Copenhagen. I've always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics. As governor of Alaska, I took a stand against politicized science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population had more than doubled. I got clobbered for my actions by radical environmentalists nationwide, but I stood by my view that adding a healthy species to the endangered list under the guise of "climate change impacts" was an abuse of the Endangered Species Act. This would have irreversibly hurt both Alaska's economy and the nation's, while also reducing opportunities for responsible development.

Our representatives in Copenhagen should remember that good environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits -- not pursuing a political agenda. That's not to say I deny the reality of some changes in climate -- far from it. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. I was one of the first governors to create a subcabinet to deal specifically with the issue and to recommend common-sense policies to respond to the coastal erosion, thawing permafrost and retreating sea ice that affect Alaska's communities and infrastructure.

But while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes. We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs. And those costs are real. Unlike the proposals China and India offered prior to Copenhagen -- which actually allow them to increase their emissions -- President Obama's proposal calls for serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions. Meeting such targets would require Congress to pass its cap-and-tax plans, which will result in job losses and higher energy costs (as Obama admitted during the campaign). That's not exactly what most Americans are hoping for these days. And as public opposition continues to stall Congress's cap-and-tax legislation, Environmental Protection Agency bureaucrats plan to regulate carbon emissions themselves, doing an end run around the American people.

In fact, we're not the only nation whose people are questioning climate change schemes. In the European Union, energy prices skyrocketed after it began a cap-and-tax program. Meanwhile, Australia's Parliament recently defeated a cap-and-tax bill. Surely other nations will follow suit, particularly as the climate e-mail scandal continues to unfold.

In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to "restore science to its rightful place." But instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the United States will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices, the president has upped the ante. He plans to fly in at the climax of the conference in hopes of sealing a "deal." Whatever deal he gets, it will be no deal for the American people. What Obama really hopes to bring home from Copenhagen is more pressure to pass the Democrats' cap-and-tax proposal. This is a political move. The last thing America needs is misguided legislation that will raise taxes and cost jobs -- particularly when the push for such legislation rests on agenda-driven science.

Without trustworthy science and with so much at stake, Americans should be wary about what comes out of this politicized conference. The president should boycott Copenhagen.

The writer was the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president and governor of Alaska from 2006 to 2009.

Net Neutrality Rules Would Dilute Concept Of Ownership On Internet By Steve Forbes

Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=514250

12/03/2009

What do the Obama administration, the Federal Communications Commission, a handful of liberal academic elites and Google all have in common? Answer: a radical plan to regulate the Internet that may totally upend the free market in today's massive information economy.

Recently, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski publicly proposed new net neutrality rules that flip the existing role of government in the net neutrality debate from a hands-off, free market enabler of consumer choice to a new, heavy-handed regulator of private companies and entrepreneurs.

With broadband providers in his sights, Genachowski announced a series of "principles" he claimed were geared toward consumer protection.

Four of these principles were similar to existing FCC practice, but with the added twist of applying only to broadband providers, thus imposing government sanctions on just one segment of the broader information economy.

Unfortunately, this one segment is one of the few bright spots in our otherwise moribund economy.

A fifth, and brand new, principle is equally discriminatory against broadband providers and even more damaging to the free market and the Internet economy. This principle of "nondiscrimination" will make illegal any attempt by broadband and content providers to offer the advanced services consumers want — prioritized high-definition movies, games, television shows and music.

All of these principles combined are but one more step to water down the concept of ownership on the Internet. The FCC may not believe this, or won't let on if they do, but that's certainly the agenda of many of net neutrality's most vocal backers in elite academia and the "public interest" community.

It is some of these voices — influential with the Obama administration — who believe that for-profit companies have no business charging for information or services in a digital environment.

In their utopia, "information equality" doesn't allow for such capitalist behavior because, as they say, "all information wants to be free." Think of it as the Internet version of rent control.

Rest assured, these FCC principles will radically transform the way business is done in our information economy, and taken to their logical conclusion could do extraordinary damage to the information economy itself.

And this is where Google comes into the picture.

With for-profit broadband providers the target of the government assault, Google stands to make windfall profits as its competition is handcuffed by federal regulators and its dominant advertising-content business model is supported and vindicated by official policy.

Nevermind that Google was the sixth-largest contributor to President Obama's campaign, or that a number of current and former Google executives sit as high-level advisers to the president and the FCC. The FCC in the name of consumer "fairness" has gerrymandered long-accepted broadband principles to target Google's competitors and give one of the administration's strongest political allies a competitive advantage every step of the way.

It appears the FCC has managed to redefine the definition of an Internet Service Provider (ISP), excluding Google from the category and thus also from its regulations. And so, although Google is in fact the largest ISP in the world (accounting for 6% of all Internet traffic according to a recent Arbor Networks study), it can continue with business as usual while Google's broadband competitors are saddled with heavy new FCC regulations.

Essentially, the Obama administration is securing Google's dominance in advertising-supported content on the web, while all but shutting down all other business models including subscription-based, streaming, downloaded and pay-per-view strategies.

This is not, and should not be, the way American government does business. It is a frightening realization of how little technical knowledge and how many political considerations have contributed to the FCC's current stance.

Recent criticisms of the FCC's net neutrality proposal by FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell in this regard are enlightening. "Do you really want five unelected bureaucrats such as myself — none of whom have an engineering degree, we're all liberal arts majors — making these types of decisions?" he asked.

Political payback for one company at the expense of an entire information economy is impermissible. The old game in Washington of industries lobbying for harmful regulations on their competitors appears to be alive and well.

The fact is that the same free market principles and intense competition that have made the Internet the powerful force it is today and that have constantly pushed America's corporations — including Google — toward new innovations and services must be allowed to endure.

Neither silly Utopian notions of net neutrality and equality — other words for price controls — nor political payback can be permitted to interfere. The Internet is a powerful force, and it would be to the detriment of all if the FCC is successful in trying to regulate its potential.

• Forbes is president and chief executive officer of Forbes Inc.

KSM On Trial: 9/11/01 — The Director's Cut By Charles Krauthammer

Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=513036

11/19/2009

For late-19th-century anarchists, terrorism was the "propaganda of the deed." And the most successful propaganda-by-deed in history was 9/11 — not just the most destructive, but the most spectacular and telegenic.

And now its self-proclaimed architect, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has been given by the Obama administration a civilian trial in New York. Just as the memory fades, 9/11 has been granted a second life — and KSM, a second act: "9/11, The Director's Cut," narration by KSM.

September 11, 2001, had to speak for itself. A decade later, the deed will be given voice. KSM has gratuitously been presented with the greatest propaganda platform imaginable — a civilian trial in the media capital of the world — from which to proclaim the glory of jihad and the criminality of infidel America.

So why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) "do not get convicted," asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. "Failure is not an option," replied Holder.

Not an option? Doesn't the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure — acquittal, hung jury — is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.

Moreover, everyone knows that whatever the outcome of the trial, KSM will never walk free. He will spend the rest of his natural life in U.S. custody. Which makes the proceedings a farcical show trial from the very beginning.

Apart from the fact that any such trial will be a security nightmare and a terror threat to New York — what better propaganda-by-deed than blowing up the entire courtroom, making KSM a martyr and making the judge, jury and spectators into fresh victims? — it will endanger U.S. security.

Civilian courts with broad rights of cross-examination and discovery give terrorists access to crucial information about intelligence sources and methods.

That's precisely what happened during the civilian New York trial of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. The prosecution was forced to turn over to the defense a list of 200 unindicted co-conspirators, including the name Osama bin Laden.

"Within 10 days, a copy of that list reached bin Laden in Khartoum," wrote former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the presiding judge at that trial, "letting him know that his connection to that case had been discovered."

Obama Blocked Execution

Finally, there's the moral logic. It's not as if Holder opposes military commissions on principle. On the same day he sent KSM to a civilian trial in New York, Holder announced he was sending Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole, to a military tribunal.

By what logic? In his congressional testimony Wednesday, Holder was utterly incoherent in trying to explain. In his Nov. 13 news conference, he seemed to be saying that if you attack a civilian target, as in 9/11, you get a civilian trial; a military target like the Cole, and you get a military tribunal.

What a perverse moral calculus. Which is the war crime — an attack on defenseless civilians or an attack on a military target such as a warship, an accepted act of war which the U.S. itself has engaged in countless times?

By what possible moral reasoning, then, does KSM, who perpetrates the obvious and egregious war crime, receive the special protections and constitutional niceties of a civilian courtroom, while he who attacked a warship is relegated to a military tribunal?

Moreover, the incentive offered any jihadi is as irresistible as it is perverse: Kill as many civilians as possible on American soil and Holder will give you Miranda rights, a lawyer, a propaganda platform — everything but your own blog.

Alternatively, Holder tried to make the case that he chose a civilian New York trial as a more likely venue for securing a conviction. An absurdity: By the time Obama came to office, KSM was ready to go before a military commission, plead guilty and be executed. It's Obama who blocked a process that would have yielded the swiftest and most certain justice.

Indeed, the perfect justice. Whenever a jihadist volunteers for martyrdom, we should grant his wish. Instead, this one, the most murderous and unrepentant of all, gets to dance and declaim at the scene of his crime.

Holder himself told the Washington Post that the coming New York trial will be "the trial of the century." The last such was the trial of O.J. Simpson.