No Oil for Pacifists

The Obama administration is sticking with a George W. Bush-era decision to deny polar bears endangered species status.

In a court filing Wednesday, the Fish and Wildlife Service defended the previous administration’s decision to give the polar bear the less-protective "threatened" species designation, a move that will frustrate environmentalists who hoped for stronger protections under the Endangered Species Act.

FWS Director Rowan Gould said the 2008 "threatened" listing was made "following careful analysis of the best scientific information, as required by the ESA."

At the time, the service determined the bears weren't danger of extinction, so did not warrant the "endangered" status. The bears were listed as "threatened" because they face serious threats from projected decline in its sea ice habitat due to global warming would result in them likely being in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future.

FWS is "confident it was and is the appropriate status," Gould said.

Listing the polar bear as "endangered" as a result of global warming could open the door to using the Endangered Species Act to regulate greenhouse gases, an outcome the Obama administration has opposed.

[T]here are profound differences in the way Americans and people in other countries -- especially Western Europeans -- view such fundamental issues as the limits of personal freedom and the role of government in helping the poor. Americans are more individualistic and favor a less compassionate government than do Europeans and others. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65%) believe success is not outside of their control. Except for Canadians (63%), most of the world disagrees. Among 44 nations surveyed, the U.S. has one of the highest percentages of people who think that most people who fail in life have themselves to blame, rather than society.

Accordingly, Americans care more about personal freedom than government assurances of social justice. Fully 58% of Americans say it is more important to have the freedom to pursue personal goals without government interference, while just 34% say it is more important for government to guarantee that no one is in need. In most other nations, majorities embrace the opposite view.

All goods physically brought into the United States, including: (1) Goods of foreign origin, and (2) Goods of domestic origin returned to the United States without substantial transformation affecting a change in tariff classification under an applicable rule of origin.

[R]esearchers say traditional ways of measuring global trade produce the number but fail to reflect the complexities of global commerce where the design, manufacturing and assembly of products often involve several countries.

"A distorted picture" is the result, they say, one that exaggerates trade imbalances between nations.

Trade statistics in both countries consider the iPhone a Chinese export to the U.S., even though it is entirely designed and owned by a U.S. company, and is made largely of parts produced in several Asian and European countries. China's contribution is the last step--assembling and shipping the phones.

So the entire $178.96 estimated wholesale cost of the shipped phone is credited to China, even though the value of the work performed by the Chinese workers at Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. accounts for just 3.6%, or $6.50, of the total, the researchers calculated in a report published this month. . .

Conventional trade figures are the basis for political battles waging in Washington and Brussels over what to do about China's currency policies and its allegedly unfair trading practices.

"What we call 'Made in China' is indeed assembled in China, but what makes up the commercial value of the product comes from the numerous countries," Pascal Lamy, the director-general of the World Trade Organization, said in a speech in October. "The concept of country of origin for manufactured goods has gradually become obsolete."

Mr. Lamy said if trade statistics were adjusted to reflect the actual value contributed to a product by different countries, the size of the U.S. trade deficit with China--$226.88 billion, according to U.S. figures--would be cut in half.

Rove Suspected In Swedish-U.S. Political Prosecution of WikiLeaks

• The city of Las Vegas has received a $5.2 million federal grant to build the Neon Boneyard Park and Museum, including $1.8 million in 2010. For over the last decade, Museum supporters have gathered and displayed over 150 old Las Vegas neon signs, such as the Golden Nugget and Silver Slipper casinos.

• The National Science Foundation provided more than to $200,000 to study of why political candidates make vague statements.

• The National Science Foundation directed nearly a quarter million dollars to a Stanford University professor’s study of how Americans use the Internet to find love.

• $137,530 to a Dartmouth professor Mary Flanagan to make a "video game called 'Layoff,' a puzzle-style game in which players fire as many people as they can as quickly as possible."

• The National Institutes of Health (NIH) spent nearly $442,340 million to study the number of male prostitutes in Vietnam and their social setting.

• This year, taxpayers forked over $60,000 for the "first-of-its kind" promotion of the Vidalia onion in conjunction with the movie, "Shrek Forever After."

• The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded over $600,000 to the Minnesota Zoo to create a wolf "avatar" video game called "WolfQuest."

SUCOLitis aspires to be something like The Onion of law-school life. The Syracuse, N.Y., satirical news blog has attracted thousands of views with fake headlines about beer pong, third-year students serving burritos, and the election of the university’s "sexiest Semite." It delights in attributing fake quotes to students and faculty, as well as to famous alumni like Vice President Joe Biden, who is quoted as calling SUCOLitis "even funnier than me."

Syracuse University officials aren’t laughing.

has threatened a student with "harassment" charges for the last two months because of the content of a satirical blog about life in law school, but the university has refused to tell him what expression in particular justified the charges or even who is charging him. Worse still, [the law school] is now demanding a gag order on law student Len Audaer, his attorney, and any media outlets that receive information about the case. Audaer, who potentially faces expulsion, came to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.

Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.

The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation's history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States. . .

"The old view that 'if we fight the terrorists abroad, we won't have to fight them here' is just that -- the old view," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told police and firefighters recently.

The Obama administration heralds this local approach as a much-needed evolution in the way the country confronts terrorism.

The next generation of University of California employees could have to work longer to receive pensions and other retirement benefits.

The UC Board of Regents on Monday approved a contentious plan that raises the retirement age for future university employees and requires retirees to pay more for their health care benefits.

Many of the changes must still be negotiated with the university's 28 employee unions, which have been critical of the reforms.

University officials said the changes are needed to address an estimated $21 billion unfunded liability in its retiree health and pension programs.

With no action, the ballooning costs of those benefits could threaten the university's ability to educate students and conduct research, officials said. . .

The plan would increase the minimum retirement age for employees hired on or after July 1, 2013 from 50 to 55. It also raises the age to receive maximum pension benefits from 60 to 65.

The retirement age would not change for current employees, but they will have to contribute more of their paychecks toward their pensions under a plan approved by the regents in September.

Cuba banned Michael Moore's 2007 documentary, Sicko, because it painted such a "mythically" favourable picture of Cuba's healthcare system that the authorities feared it could lead to a "popular backlash", according to US diplomats in Havana.

The revelation, contained in a confidential US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks , is surprising, given that the film attempted to discredit the US healthcare system by highlighting what it claimed was the excellence of the Cuban system.

But the memo reveals that when the film was shown to a group of Cuban doctors, some became so "disturbed at the blatant misrepresentation of healthcare in Cuba that they left the room".

Castro's government apparently went on to ban the film because, the leaked cable claims, it "knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them."

Climate change and population control can make for a politically explosive mix, as media mogul Ted Turner demonstrated Sunday when he urged world leaders to institute a global one-child policy to save the Earth’s environment. . .

Mr. Turner -- a long-time advocate of population control -- said the environmental stress on the Earth requires radical solutions, suggesting countries should follow China’s lead in instituting a one-child policy to reduce global population over time. He added that fertility rights could be sold so that poor people could profit from their decision not to reproduce.

By the late 1990s, Ted Turner was worth more than $2 billion; the largest private landowner in the U.S., he divided his days between luxurious homes in six states. A flamboyant and shrewd businessman, he was also a celebrity who worked and lived in the fast lane. In December 1991, Turner married Jane Fonda, movie star and liberal activist. Two previous marriages had produced five children.

[Some progressives] are generally favourable to state intervention . . . because this is democracy at work, with the interests of the people being asserted through government provision of health, education and a host of other things. But when it comes to defence and foreign policy, democracy and the interests of the people line up differently; for now government, our government, no longer stands for these things. Rather, it is the vehicle of imperialism, neo-imperialism, Western arrogance, cultural supremacy -- lined up now against the popular interests of oppressed peoples everywhere, as democratically represented by. . . oh, the Mullahs in Iran, the regime in Beijing, Hamas, Hezbollah, Mugabe, Cuba's rulers. 'Who are we to etc and so forth?' Hang on a second: I'm running into a problem with this.

This is an executive level position with overall responsibility and accountability for ensuring the implementation of policies, programs and procedures to promote diversity and increase or sustain workforce diversity levels consistent with the demographics of the United States. Through subordinate staff, you will assess and analyze the diversity policies and practices of FHFA and the regulated entities and the Office of Finance. Other responsibilities include: Directing the development and implementation of standards and procedures to ensure the fair inclusion and utilization of minorities, women, the disabled, veterans and minority-owned and women-owned businesses in all business and activities of FHFA at all levels, including in procurement and all types of contracts. . .

Salary ranges from $180,000 - $255,000, commensurate with experience. FHFA is unique in many ways, as compared to other federal agencies. Our employees receive all of the standard federal benefits plus additional agency-specific benefits.

The person selected as the Associate Director for Women and Minority Inclusion will lead this new office. Additional vacancies will be advertised in the near future.

Since the late nineteenth century most intellectuals have identified progress with the advance of the bureaucratic, redistributionist and administrative state. The government, guided by credentialed intellectuals with scientific training and values, would lead society through the economic and political perils of the day. An ever more powerful state would play an ever larger role in achieving ever greater degrees of affluence and stability for the population at large, redistributing wealth to provide basic sustenance and justice to the poor. The social mission of intellectuals was to build political support for the development of the new order, to provide enlightened guidance based on rational and scientific thought to policymakers, to administer the state through a merit based civil service, and to train new generations of managers and administrators. The modern corporation was supposed to evolve in a similar way, with business becoming more stable, more predictable and more bureaucratic.

Most American intellectuals today are still shaped by this worldview and genuinely cannot imagine an alternative vision of progress. It is extremely difficult for such people to understand the economic forces that are making this model unsustainable and to see why so many Americans are in rebellion against this kind of state and society -- but if our society is going to develop we have to move beyond the ideas and the institutions of twentieth century progressivism. The promises of the administrative state can no longer be kept and its premises no longer hold. The bureaucratic state is too inefficient to provide the needed services at a sustainable cost -- and bureaucratic, administrative governments are by nature committed to maintain the status quo at a time when change is needed. For America to move forward, power is going to have to shift from bureaucrats to entrepreneurs, from the state to society and from qualified experts and licensed professionals to the population at large.

Progressives are often as overwhelmed by the world economy as primitive man was by his natural environment. Just as the primitive man was confused by and fearful of storms and earthquakes and drought and disease, progressives are befuddled by the rise and fall of industries, booms and recessions, wealth and poverty. And just as primitive men invented gods and myths to help bring order and a sense of controllability to events they didn’t understand, progressives create governments in the hopes of imposing top-down order on a chaotic economy. . .

Because capitalism is based so completely on individual decision-making, because its operation is inherently chaotic, and because its rewards can’t possibly be divided equally and still be "rewards", progressives are hugely uncomfortable with it. Ironically, though progressives want to posture at being "dynamic", it turns out that capitalism is in fact too dynamic for them. Industries rise and fall, jobs are won and lost, recessions give way to booms. Progressives want comfort and certainty. They want to lock things down the way they are. They want to know that such and such job will be there tomorrow and next decade, and will always pay at least X amount. Which is why, in the end, progressives are all statists, because only a government with totalitarian powers can bring the order and certainty and control of individual decision-making that they crave, just like the invention of Apollo assured the Greeks that the sun would indeed rise the next day.

Lest you think Washington has begun a new era of fiscal self-restraint, consider this week's act of political retribution by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Newly elected GOP Governors in Ohio and Wisconsin wanted to kill high-speed rail projects in their states and instead use the money to fix their battered roads. Sorry, guys. Mr. LaHood reclaimed the $1.2 billion and handed it to 13 other states that still want to build these high-speed trains to nowhere.

Both Wisconsin's Scott Walker and Ohio's John Kasich had campaigned against the trains, and rightly so given passenger rail's financial, er, track record. But the Obama Administration is bent on building mass transit whether the masses like it or not. Thanks to Mr. LaHood, Wisconsin and Ohio taxpayers will still have the privilege of paying for the new train projects even if they're built somewhere else. Ah, federalism.

Messrs. Walker and Kasich are right on the merits, and we're confident they'll save their taxpayers money over time.

Consider the case of California, which is one of the states getting cash for trains that the Midwesterners didn't want. Earlier this month its high-speed rail authority approved construction on the first 65-mile segment of a 500-mile bullet train. The first miles will connect the small towns of Borden and Corcoran in the Central Valley for a mere $4.15 billion. Yes, that's billion.

What, there aren’t any high-priced French restaurants in South LA? Sacre bleu! That might have something to do with the high unemployment and low incomes in the area. Perry complains that 72% of the restaurants in the area are fast food compared to West LA’s concentration being in the mid-40s, but the obvious explanation is that higher income areas can support higher-priced restaurants.

KATIE COURIC: On Iraq, books have been written, as you know, many, many books; documentaries have been made about how intelligence was incorrectly analyzed and cherry-picked to build an argument for war, and memos from that time do suggest that officials knew there was a small chance of actually finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Well, wait a second, what?

COURIC: (Chuckles.) There are -- there are some things that seem to suggest that in the buildup to the actual war that there was some doubt about that, wouldn't you say --

RICE: No. (Laughter.)

COURIC: Well --

RICE: Actually, I don't agree with that premise at all.

COURIC: You don't?

RICE: No. . .

COURIC: Well, if there weren't, ultimately, weapons of mass destruction found, what was then the rationale for war? Without that, is there another rationale other than the world is better off without Saddam Hussein?

RICE: Well, that's a pretty good rationale. (Laughter.) But let me -- let me go back to the premise, the question, in the absence of weapons of mass destruction, what was the -- it's true that you can only -- that what you know today can affect what you know and do tomorrow, but what you know today cannot affect what you did yesterday.

So the premise that somehow, because weapons of mass destruction were not found in stockpiles, the rationale for the war was flawed leaves out the fact that at the time that we decided to go to war, we thought there were weapons of mass destruction.

See, no one believes the Democrats on Global Warming. Why? Because they live in big houses, fly on their private jets, and consume more than the average aggregate of a third world country.

Liberals aren’t using outhouses. They drive Hummers. They have fleets of submarines. They cool their homes. They are, in short, unserious about the Cataclysm That Is Upon Us.

So, we don’t take them seriously and go about living our lives.

The Republican version of The World Is Going To End, has been spending. And, for once, it’s not hyperbole. The United States is in a very precarious financial position.

• Commerce Clause: Hudson says the mandate can't be grounded on Congressional authority over interstate commerce:

  Neither the Supreme Court nor any federal circuit court of appeals has extended Commerce Clause powers to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market. In so doing, enactment of the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision exceeds the Commerce Clause powers vested in Congress under Article I.

  Virginia v. Seblius, Slip Op. at 24; see also id. at 37 ("no reported decisions from any federal appellate courts extending the Commerce Clause or General Welfare Clause to encompass regulation of a person's decision not to purchase a product"). Admittedly, as Hudson implies, the absence of on-point citation stems from the fact that (in my words) it's almost "a case of first impression." Still, Judge Hudson misses a case I cited, United States v. Bishop, 66 F.3d 569 (3d. Cir.), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 1032 (1995), where a Federal car-jacking criminal law was deemed a valid exercise of Commerce Clause authority. And, even apart from the Bishop case, Hudson never seriously seeks textual support from the various Supreme Court cases on the Commerce Clause. The closest he comes is to seize on the word "activities" from Perez v. United States, 402 U.S. 146, 150 (1971) ("activities affecting commerce"), to suggest that non-action isn't an activity. Virginia v. Seblius, Slip Op. at 21. But one could just as easily argue that deciding not to purchase -- say, by declining employer-sponsored coverage, or choosing not to "call right now; operators are standing by!" -- is an activity that affects commerce. Yes, I know that this reading would bring many aspects of life under the Commerce Clause--but insurance is unquestionably interstate commerce, so it's at least plausible that, in regulating the market for health insurance, Congress could have the power to force minimum coverage.



• Necessary and Proper: Hudson also rejects the government's reliance on the Article I, Section 8, clause 18 power to "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers." He says:

  If a person’s decision not to purchase health insurance at a particular point in time does not constitute the type of economic activity subject to regulation under the Commerce Clause, then logically an attempt to enforce such provision under the Necessary and Proper Clause is equally offensive to the Constitution.

  Virginia v. Seblius, Slip Op. at 19. Yet, as Orin Kerr says at the Volokh Conspiracy:

  Judge Hudson does not cite any authority for this conclusion: He seems to believe it is required by logic. But it is incorrect. The point of the Necessary and Proper clause is that it grants Congress the power to use means outside the enumerated list of of Article I powers to achieve the ends listed in Article I. If you say, as a matter of "logic" or otherwise, that the Necessary and Proper Clause only permits Congress to regulate using means that are themselves covered by the Commerce Clause, then the Necessary and Proper Clause is rendered a nullity. But that’s not how the Supreme Court has interpreted the Clause, from Chief Justice Marshall onwards.

  I don't fully agree with Kerr; as fellow Volokh blogger Jonathan Adler says, "one needs to identify some alternative limit" to the authority granted by the necessary and proper clause. But the point is that Hudson didn't try to tease the test out of some prior ruling--which is a judge's job. (Indeed, Hudson's opinion cites last term's Comstock case, which takes an expansive view of the ambit of that provision.)

For decades, the idea behind corn ethanol has been that fuel derived from the crop could diminish America's dependence on distasteful foreign regimes for fuel - it's done some of this - and cut carbon emissions - it's done little of this. Congress established an overlapping and expensive system of subsidies, requiring that billions of gallons of ethanol be blended into the nation's gasoline, slapping tariffs on foreign ethanol and handing those who blend the fuel into gasoline a tax credit of 45 cents a gallon.

In other words, the government pays the industry for the privilege of selling to a captive market, spending $6 billion in 2009 on the tax credits alone. Without the tax credits, the amount of corn ethanol produced would still increase over the next 10 years, the Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri calculates. Yet the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that taxpayers still pay $1.78 to replace a gallon of gasoline with its energy equivalent of corn ethanol. The numbers are far worse when put in terms of greenhouse gases. The CBO reports that it costs a staggering $750 to reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions one ton by burning corn ethanol -- and the CBO makes some generous assumptions to get even that figure.

Yet because the policy directs cash to farm states that are rich in political influence, lawmakers are rallying to save this payoff from expiration. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who insisted Sunday that President Obama's fiscal commission didn't go far enough in its deficit reduction plan, has paired with Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) to press for renewal of the gratuitous corn ethanol tax credit and the ethanol tariff through 2015. Typically, the farm lobby has won out on such issues. But this year it's meeting stronger than usual opposition from a bloc of fiscal conservatives and environmentalists, backed by such strange bedfellows as Tea Party organizer FreedomWorks and ultra-liberal pressure group MoveOn.org -- even Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Al Gore.

An extension of the corn ethanol provisions shouldn't be part of the deal that's emerging on the Bush tax cuts, and if it is, senators should remove it from the resulting legislation.

Speaking before some 500 people at the Ritz-Carlton, Doha, Leonhard said the move from the pre-Internet broadcast culture to the broadband culture had changed pretty much everything, from economic models and their underlying business logic to the very definition of copyright and fair use.

He said such a shift was already in the midst of people around the world, noting that Internet content earned billions of dollars more in the US than content on television and newspapers.

He said the broadcast and print media were threatened by this trend, citing the example of Facebook, which reaches more people in the Middle East than newspapers.

"In the content industries, we are going from selling copies, whether physical or digital such as books and CDs, to selling access, such as bundled music offerings where music is included in Internet access," said Leonhard.

"Without a doubt, data is the new oil. Over four billion connected users will generate zettabytes of data, every single day, by commenting, rating, tagging, forwarding, uploading and sharing content. Every marketer, every brand, every telco and every mobile operator will want to get to this data, and be allowed to use it," he said.

He said the consumer, better known in digital media as "user", will be more powerful than ever before, and -- just like oil -- many difficult situations will arise from the use, discovery, mining and refining of data.

President Hugo Chavez has blamed "criminal" capitalism for global climate phenomena including incessant rains that have brought chaos to Venezuela, killing 32 people and leaving 70,000 homeless.

Worst hit is the coastal area of the South American Opec member nation where millions live in precarious hillside shantytowns and mudslides have been toppling rickety houses. . .

Taking up a familiar theme, Chavez, the most vocal leader in Latin America’s ALBA bloc of left-wing governments, lashed the "arrogance" of rich nations. ALBA is urging radical change and far-reaching targets at the Mexico talks.

"The environmental imbalance capitalism has caused is without doubt the fundamental cause of the alarming atmospheric phenomena," he wrote in his weekly opinion column. "The world’s powerful economies insist on a destructive way of life and then refuse to take any responsibility."

Though such talk has won praise from some campaigners, Venezuela is an unlikely climate champion given it is a major global oil exporter and also a famously consumerist society.

In fact, "Fair Game," based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions - not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false. In reality, as The Post's Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby reported, Ms. Plame did not work directly on the program, and it was not shut down because of her identification.

The movie portrays Mr. Wilson as a whistle-blower who debunked a Bush administration claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger. In fact, an investigation by the Senate intelligence committee found that Mr. Wilson's reporting did not affect the intelligence community's view on the matter, and an official British investigation found that President George W. Bush's statement in a State of the Union address that Britain believed that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger was well-founded.

"Fair Game" also resells the couple's story that Ms. Plame's exposure was the result of a White House conspiracy. A lengthy and wasteful investigation by a special prosecutor found no such conspiracy -- but it did confirm that the prime source of a newspaper column identifying Ms. Plame was a State Department official, not a White House political operative.

I believe that the Qatar World Cup will be a most effective weapon against al Qaeda and the forces of Islamist darkness. Arab society has seen the world embrace it in a truly global enterprise, and will, I believe, rise to the challenge--a challenge that includes not merely effective organization, but a transformation of traditional ways into cosmopolitan ones. Qatar will play host to tens of thousands of fans from around the world--men and women who will expect to sit together, women who will expect total equality and the right to dress as they please, fans who will want--and not expect to be denied--a drink . . . Fans who will have no truck with religious police, modesty police, or killjoys of any kind. And if Israel qualifies, Qatar will not be able to deny it the right to play, for the first time, on Arab soil. Think of that.

All this could be electrifying and transformative--the 2022 World Cup could, without exaggeration, bring about a cultural revolution.

In August 1960, representatives from the Lord Chamberlain's office attended a performance of Les Ballets Africains to determine if the production was ballet or theater. If ballet, bare breasts were permissible; if theater, strictly forbidden. The authorities agreed it was a ballet--and the press had a field day with photos.