When will the alarmists who worried about “losing rights” because of Bush’s wiretap method for defense of the nation start screaming foul about these lefty moves?
Posted by Tina
A Desperate Man Investors Business Daily
Radicalism: In another example of junk science run amok, NASA scientist James Hansen wants oil executives put on trial for giving “misinformation” about his global warming theory. Is this where society is headed? ** If so, we are headed for a dangerous place. Only in totalitarian systems is dissent a criminal offense. ** Out of this has emerged a madness that has divided Westerners into “us,” the believers, and “them,” the skeptics who are looked down upon as socially irresponsible reprobates. ** That’s not enough for Hansen, though. He now wants to ratchet his machine up a few notches. ** Put the oil men on trial, he says, because it’s “a crime” for them to “have been putting out misinformation” that places doubt on his unproved and unprovable premise that man’s use of fossil fuels is warming Earth. ** We wonder: Will it be up to NASA’s secret police to make the arrests that will be necessary to drag these men before the tribunal?
Congress’s Fingerprint Fine Print, by John Berlau WSJ
Fingerprints have long been considered to be among the most personal of information. Proposals for creating fingerprint databases are usually controversial and often lead to a spirited public debate. Even when a fingerprint registry will likely help fight terrorism or crime, many still fear it will lead to a surveillance state. ** Yet this week a measure creating a federal fingerprint registry totally unrelated to national security or violent crime may clear the Senate with little debate. The legislation would require thousands of individuals not suspected of any wrongdoing to send their prints to the feds. ** What issue is so important that it warrants creating a fingerprint database without public debate? Believe it or not, the housing slowdown. The database and fingerprint mandates are contained in the housing bailout bill that will likely come to a vote on Tuesday.
The answer, of course, is that they won’t. It’s up to us to notice the hypocrise.