EPA to go after Cow Gas
For farmers, this stinks: Belching and gaseous cows and hogs could start costing them money if the federal government decides to charge fees for air-polluting animals. Farmers so far are turning their noses up at the notion, which they contend is a possible consequence of an Environmental Protection Agency report after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases from motor vehicles amounts to air pollution.

Obama Pledges 21st Century New Deal
President-elect Barack Obama added sweep and meat to his economic agenda on Saturday, pledging the largest new investment in roads and bridges since President Dwight D. Eisenhower built the Interstate system in the late 1950s, and tying his key initiatives – education, energy, health care –back to jobs in a package that has the makings of a smaller and modern version of FDR's New Deal marriage of job creation with infrastructure upgrades.

U.S. Job Losses Signal Recession Will Be Long, Deep
The U.S. economy may be headed for its deepest and longest recession since World War II as mounting job losses take their toll on consumer confidence and spending. Employers cut payrolls last month at the fastest pace in 34 years as the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent, the highest level since 1993. The 533,000 drop brought cumulative job losses this year to 1.91 million, the Labor Department said yesterday in Washington. “Almost all businesses are in survival mode, and they’re slashing payrolls and investments just to conserve cash,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s.

Recycle Fines Increases
While neighboring counties encourage recycling, Gwinnett County’s new solid waste management ordinance puts teeth into it. The ordinance provides for a civil fine of $500 for violations, which includes those who fail to “source separate residential recovered materials.”

Scientists find greenhouse gas hysteria to be myth
A study released earlier this year by the University of Colorado and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicates that all the greenhouse gases humans have dumped in the atmosphere over the last 46 years – the primary factor most climate change proponents cite to blame humans for global warming – haven't affected land temperatures at all. The rise in land temperatures, the study states, can be tied directly to increased heat and humidity coming from warmer oceans, which in turn, the study admits, may be caused solely by natural forces. The results led the scientists to conclude, "Global warming may not be occurring in quite the manner one might have imagined."

Obama Rebuked Again: New Orleans Liberals Ousted by Conservatives
In the 2nd Congressional District, which includes most of New Orleans, Republican attorney Anh "Joseph" Cao defeated 9–term Rep. William Jefferson and will become the first Vietnamese-American in Congress. In the 4th Congressional District in western Louisiana, Republican John Fleming beat Democrat Paul Carmouche.

Mileage Tax on the Horizon!
In order to rescue the state’s financially challenged public transit system, a draft report from liberal politicians made public yesterday says that Rhode Island should consider charging tolls at the state line on every interstate highway and creating a new tax for each mile a vehicle is driven.

Failed Drug Policy: Amsterdam’s Legalization Policy Increased Organized Crime
Amsterdam unveiled plans Saturday to close brothels, sex shops and marijuana cafes in its ancient city center as part of a major effort to drive organized crime out of the tourist haven. The city is targeting businesses that "generate criminality," including gambling parlors, and the so-called "coffee shops" where marijuana is sold openly. Also targeted are peep shows, massage parlors and souvenir shops used by drug dealers for money-laundering. Many drug legalization advocates say that legalizing drugs will reduce crime.

Top Immigration Enforcement Official Arrested After Hiring Illegal Alien
A top Homeland Security official in Boston has been accused of repeatedly hiring illegal immigrants to clean her home. Lorraine Henderson, the regional director of Homeland Security, Customs, and Border Protection, was arrested Friday at her home in Salem. She was expected to appear in federal court later Friday. Henderson is responsible for stopping illegal aliens from entering the country through the Port of Boston.

500K Illegal Immigrants Defying Deportation Orders
Zeituni Onyango came to the United States seeking asylum from her native Kenya but was turned down and ordered to leave the country in 2004.?Four years later, she is still here. And her nephew is about to become president of the United States.?Onyango's family connection to Barack Obama has thrown a spotlight on a phenomenon many Americans might find startling: An estimated half-million immigrants are living in the United States in defiance of deportation orders.

Eduardo Verástegui teams up with Right to Life committee in Spain
Mexican actor and producer Eduardo Verastegui has teamed up with the pro-life website in Spain “DerechoaVivir.org” (RighttoLife.org) in order to battle against a plan to overhaul the nation’s abortion laws. The actor appears in a video on the website inviting Spaniards to join in rejecting the plan.

UN's obsession is grotesque and Orwellian
Like so much of what takes place at the UN, the obsession with demonizing Israel and extolling the Palestinians is grotesque and Orwellian. More than 1 million Israeli Arabs enjoy civil and political rights unmatched in the Arab world — yet Israel is accused of repression and human-rights abuse. Successive Israeli governments have endorsed a "two-state solution" - yet Israel is blasted as the obstacle to peace. The Palestinian Authority oversees the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich, and wants all Jews expelled from the land it claims for itself - yet Israel is labeled an "apartheid state" and singled out for condemnation and ostracism.

Obama hasn’t kept campaign promises
After backing out on his campaign promise to end the war and to have real change in DC with new people, President-elect Barack Obama is now learning how hard it is to keep his promise to avoid aides who have been entangled with the capital's lobbying scene.

Rumsfeld Nemesis Shinseki to be VA Boss
President-elect Barack Obama has chosen retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki to be the next Veterans Affairs secretary, turning to a former Army chief of staff once vilified by the Bush administration for questioning its Iraq war strategy. Shinseki testified to Congress that it might take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to control Iraq after the invasion in 2003, which turned out to be prophetic.

California to pay vendors with IOU’s
California, the world’s eighth-largest economy, may pay vendors with IOUs for only the second time since the Great Depression, State Finance Director Mike Genest said.

Huck & Sarah Most Popular for 2012 Race
a CNN 2012 GOP Presidential Poll has Mike Huckabee at 34% and Sarah Palin at 32% among Republicans and independents. Mitt pulls 28, Gingrich 27, Giuliani(!) 23, and Jindal 19.

Ayers: It wasn’t terrorism, it was more like “extreme vandalism”
The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam War.

Muslim plea to Obama: Return to 'Islamic roots'
Claiming Barack Obama has roots in the Islamic religion, an Egyptian cleric has broadcast a plea urging Obama to convert to Islam while warning if the U.S. doesn't withdraw its troops from the Middle East and provide aid to Muslims, those "eager for [death]" will attack America. "My message to [Obama] is threefold," declares Egyptian cleric Hassan Abu Al-Ashbal, speaking last week on the state-funded Al Nas religious television network. "First, I invite him to convert to Islam. This is the call of the Prophet and of Allah. Oh, Obama – convert to Islam, and you will be saved."

AIG Offers Shariah-Compliant Insurance
After American International Group Inc, or AIG, reached two major bailout agreements totaling $152.5 billion in taxpayer dollars, the company is stepping up its dealings with Islamic finance by offering Shariah-compliant homeowners insurance to the U.S. – outraging critics over AIG's support of a "discriminatory ideology, that is against equality, and that is against liberty."

Supremes rules to allow evidence collected by Kline against Planned Parenthood
Caleb Stegall, a Kansas Liberty columnist and an attorney who represents Kline, said during the Friday press conference that each aspect of the relief sought by Planned Parenthood was denied by the high court. “Mr. Kline was not ordered to disgorge the records at issue, but rather to provide a complete set of those records to the attorney general. Mr. Kline was not held in contempt. Mr. Kline was not held to have acted in bad faith. Mr. Kline was not held to have violated the constitutional privacy rights of patients or to have violated his oath of office. And no attorney fees were awarded,” Stegall pointed out. Many area newspapers apparently missed the court's decision entirely and focused on Beier's "sanction" of Kline, only to change their stories later in the day.

Kansas Chief Justice Admonishes Fellow Justices for Treatment of Kline
Chief Justice Kay McFarland admonishes her fellow justices for their actions in this case: …the majority is more interested in reprimanding Kline for his attitude and behavior in the course of this litigation than in remediating the failure to leave a complete set of the investigation records for the incoming Attorney General. It appears to me that the majority invokes our extraordinary inherent power to sanction simply to provide a platform from which it can denigrate Kline for actions that it cannot find to have been in violation of any law and to heap scorn upon him for his attitude and behavior that does not rise to the level of contempt. This is the very antithesis of “restraint and discretion” and is not an appropriate exercise of our inherent power.

News from Courts You've Never Heard Of
The long saga of Phill Kline versus Kansas's anything-goes abortion providers took a bizarre turn this afternoon when the state supreme court issued a ruling attacking Kline in some of the harshest, most vitriolic language most of us will ever see in a high-court decision. If you're wearing flame-retardant clothing, you can read it here. But the odd part is, the ruling went in Kline's favor. But you would never know it from the local Kansas papers.

State-Owned Casino to Open in Dodge City The Kansas Racing and Gaming Commission has approved a background check for Butler National Service Corp., clearing the way for the Olathe-based company to move forward with plans for Ford County's state-owned casino. The facility will be completed and opened within 12 months." Butler has proposed building an $87.5 million complex, which would include a hotel and other amenities, on the western outskirts of Dodge City near U.S. Highway 50.

Broadcast 'Fairness' Fouls Out

Reactionary liberalism, the ideology of many Democrats, holds that inconvenient rights, such as secret ballots in unionization elections, should be repealed; that existing failures, such as GM, should be preserved; and, with special perversity, that repealed mistakes, such as the "fairness doctrine," should be repeated. That Orwellian name was designed to disguise the doctrine's use as the government's instrument for preventing fair competition in the broadcasting of political commentary.

Because liberals have been even less successful in competing with conservatives on talk radio than Detroit has been in competing with its rivals, liberals are seeking intellectual protectionism in the form of regulations that suppress ideological rivals. If liberals advertise their illiberalism by reimposing the fairness doctrine, the Supreme Court might revisit its 1969 ruling that the fairness doctrine is constitutional. The court probably would dismay reactionary liberals by reversing that decision on the ground that the world has changed vastly, pertinently and for the better.

Until the Reagan administration extinguished it, the doctrine required broadcasters to devote reasonable time to fairly presenting all sides of any controversial issue discussed on the air. The government decided the meaning of the italicized words.

When government regulation of the content of broadcasts began in 1927, the supposed justification was the scarcity of radio spectrum. In 1928 and 1929, when Republicans ran Washington, a New York station owned by the Socialist Party was warned to show "due regard" for others' opinions, and the government blocked the Chicago Federation of Labor's attempted purchase of a station because all stations should serve "the general public." In 1939, when Democrats ran Washington, the government conditioned renewal of one station's license on that station's promise to desist from anti-FDR editorials.

In 1969, when the Supreme Court declared the fairness doctrine constitutional, it probably did not know the Kennedy administration's use of it, as one official described it: "Our massive strategy was to use the fairness doctrine to challenge and harass the right-wing broadcasters and hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue." Richard Nixon emulated this practice. In 1973, Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, a liberal, said the doctrine "has no place in our First Amendment regime" because it "enables administration after administration to toy with TV or radio."

The court's 1969 ruling relied heavily on the scarcity rationale. But Brian Anderson and Adam Thierer, in their book "A Manifesto for Media Freedom," note that today there are about 14,000 radio stations, twice as many as in 1969; 18.9 million subscribers to satellite radio, up 17 percent in 12 months; and that 86 percent of households with either cable or satellite television receive an average of 102 of the 500 available channels. Because daily newspapers are much more scarce than are radio and television choices, should there be a fairness doctrine for the New York Times?

The 1969 court dismissed as "speculative" the possibility that the fairness doctrine would cause broadcasters to "eliminate coverage of controversial issues." But the proper worry was that the doctrine would continue to stifle the flowering of controversy. A court that considers the doctrine today will note that whereas in 1980 there were fewer than 100 talk radio programs, today there are more than 1,500 news or talk radio stations. Further subverting the "scarcity" rationale for government supervision of broadcast content, some liberals now say: The problem is not maldistribution of opinion and information but too much of both. Until recently, liberals fretted that the media were homogenizing America into blandness. Now they say speech management by government is needed because of a different scarcity -- the public's attention, which supposedly is overloaded by today's information cornucopia.

And these worrywarts say the proliferation of radio, cable, satellite broadcasting and Internet choices allows people to choose their own universe of commentary, which takes us far from the good old days when everyone had the communitarian delight of gathering around the cozy campfire of the NBC-ABC-CBS oligopoly. Being a liberal is exhausting when you must simultaneously argue for illiberal policies on the basis of dangerous scarcity and menacing abundance.

If reactionary liberals, unsatisfied with dominating the mainstream media, academia and Hollywood, were competitive on talk radio, they would be uninterested in reviving the fairness doctrine. Having so sullied liberalism's name that they have taken to calling themselves progressives, liberals are now ruining the reputation of reactionaries, which really is unfair.