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her lawyers told Issa that she intended to claim the fifth but Issa let her make a statement anyway

Issa didn't trick anyone. Her counsel could have advised her not to make a statement, but chose to remain silent. Further, her statement sounded like it had been drafted by her counsel. The statement is therefore part of her strategy. She cannot afford a protracted court battle, so the strategy is beyond me. The statement may have been good PR, but it could cost her all her assets in legal expenses. There is something else afoot.

Sad.

Powell would think his mission accomplished if we were angry, not sad.

Enoch Powell’s “River of Blood” speech?

Yes.

Powell's ghost hangs over the scene of today's horror.

As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood". That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.

Enoch Powell, 1968

In a sane world, homosexual sex should be, not banned, but discouraged. Age of consent laws should recognize this and the realities of homosexual recruitment. For example, the maximum age difference for a fourteen-year-old might logically be four years for normal sex and two years for homosexual sex.

Of course this won't happen politically in the foreseeable future. We should not, however, lose sight of what is reasonable. Otherwise, the left will tear us apart with these straw man cases. For example, there is a huge difference between a sexually normal high school senior dating a freshman and a homosexual senior perverting (that verb captures what is actually occurring) a freshman.

Comments on its validity?

The author describes the Republican Robert Bennett as "crazed". The author may have a Dem slant.

a Turkish knife at their throats

That is worth $20 billion to avoid.

A Judeo-Christian pipeline along the Med floor will have a higher capital cost, but be secure: from Leviathan, around the Basin to south of Cyprus (field), then to south of Crete (field), then Greece, then heel of Italy and to market. Meanwhile, convert Israeli vehicles to CNG.

Thank you, Yosemitest.

Sen Ted Cruz ( R TX) voted Nay “cloture”

Thank you.

A cloture vote, which requires sixty Yeas to pass, is often the true test of a Senator's opposition to a bill, since many Senators are "allowed" to vote Nay on the bill itself, which only require fifty Yeas plus the Vice President to pass, to give themselves political cover.

I believe Sen Ted Cruz wrote the amendment SA 30, and yes, he voted for it. On Passage of the Bill (H.R. 933 As Amended ) Sen Ted Cruz voted Nay. I hope you appreciate the time it took me to find this.

How did Senator Cruz vote on Cloture?

brutal suppression

... the only language that Islamists understand.

You may be on to something. You can buy gold chloride from Salt Lake Minerals in a 1% solution for $100 per 100ml, which works out to $100 per gram of gold. That is $1,460 per troy ounce and Salt Lake will give you a discount for larger quantities. Front month gold futures are $1,606, so there may be an arbitrage.

Still, I would like to make gold the way nature did. This would reduce the cost of materials. Energy inputs would be substantial, however.

Gold Chloride

That's not cost effective, even with gold as the end product.

I like this approach from UCSB:

all you need is some other stuff made of elements with atomic number smaller than gold and a source of neutrons. If you feed in the neutrons appropriately you can build up the nucleus up in mass until you get gold nuclei. Along the way, some of the the neutrons will decay into a proton and electron and neutrino. The nucleus ejects the electron and neutrino and the atomic number steps up by one since there is now an extra proton in the nucleus.

This is not supposed to be cost effective either, but perhaps collider research will produce something better.

The article did not explain how to make gold from quartz.

The authors would probably hypothesize that water with certain minerals in solution must be brought under pressure to ~390C, then suddenly de-pressurized, vaporizing the water.

What minerals should be in solution?

they did it on Friday

FDR announced the 1933 Bank closure on a Sunday. Leaving it over a weekend, with no final plan in place, leaves time for tempers to erupt, which they are.

S&P futures are off 22 points.

The deposit raid is being taken as an EU sign of desperation. They would have to be to pull a stunt like that.

most of the scandal in the Catholic Church isn’t really about pedophilia. It’s gotten that tag in the media for a reason; to take away from the fact that it’s really homo priests wanting to have sex with teenage boys. “Pedophilia” conjures up images of creepy old men molesting little girls, which is not what the bulk of the scandal is about, and the media knows it.

Tom Flanagan, a libertarian and former advisor to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was recently caught here saying that viewing child pornography should not be a crime. For two years, Flanagan had been a member of the Man Boy Love Association.

As you stated, the issue in both the Napier and Flanagan incidents is homosexuality, not paedophilia.

The media frames cases like this, which they set up, as paedophilia, since gay rights is one of their pet projects on the path to international socialism.

I don’t use Google unless absolutely necessary.

As a long-time Gmail user, I now put Gmail on a different browser, Opera, and use Mozilla Firefox for everything else. That prevents Google from tracking my every move. This is a pain. however, so I am considering moving to the best e-mail service I could find, LuxSci, and forwarding all my Gmail messages to LuxSci.

If Christians benefit from the atrocities of the genocidal Assad regime then they give Christianity a bad name

Both sides have blood on their hands, though our media emphasizes the misdeeds of the Assad regime, rather than those of the al Quaeda-backed rebels.

At least Assad, as Mubarek did in Egypt, protects minorities.

Does it advance U.S. interests to support Sunni terrorists over Shiite terrorists?

Saudi Sunnis knocked down the World Trade Center, but Saudi Arabia is given a pass because of their oil power. Then we enlisted the Saudis to evict Assad's Shiite ascendancy because they sought Iran's protection.

The U.S. should stay out of this mess. but can't seem to avoid getting dragged in. It will end badly, with a bad rep for the U.S., just as it got from Kermit Roosevelt's machinations in 1950s Iran.

... but you got it here for free, FWIW.

The wonder of FR.

Increased U.S. shale oil production should compensate for increased consumption, which may itself be muted due to technological advances.

That's my back-of-the-envelope.

Between 2011 and 2030, seventeen years from now, Alberta oil sands production is forecast by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers to increase from 1.6 million barrels per day to 5.0 million barrels per day, an increase of 3.4 million barrels per day. Over the same period, conventional Western Canadian production is forecast to remain constant at 1.1 million barrels per day.

Current net non-Canadian U.S. imports are (6.0-2.7)= 3.3 million barrels per day.

Therefore, even without increased domestic U.S. shale oil production, Canadian oils and production can entirely displace non-Canadian U.S. crude imports IF there is sufficient pipeline capacity and IF that increased Canadian production is not exported to other countries, such as China.

Split the law firm in two by specialty and have each half hire the sixty-five employees for twenty hours per week each.

In December, NET U.S. imports were 6.0 million barrels per day, of which Canada contributed a net 2.7, or nearly half. Imports from Canada are expected to grow by over three million barrels per day over the next twelve years, due to oil sands development. Along with increased domestic shale oil (”tight oil”) production, this trend should eliminate U.S. imports from OPEC counties, mainly Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Irag. This is good news. Let’s just not so tick off the Canadians that they sell their oil to China instead. That would be a geopolitical nightmare. Keystone is a beginning.

You allege US oil price manipulation of oil prices to first bankrupt the Soviet Union, an exporter, with low prices in the 1980s and then humble China, an importer, with high prices, currently. I visited the link you gave me to the book published in mid-2008 when spot crude was over $140 per barrel. Here is a comment by a reader with “Bic” as a screen name:

This book was recommended to me, but I found the theme all too conspiratorial for my liking and factually wrong in many instances (or at very least, facts taken selectively to shore up a shaky theory).

As others have noted, the idea that the US and its allies used low oil prices to drive the Soviets into oblivion is convenient theory, but doesn’t pass the smell or facts test. You’d have to “forget” the OPEC embargoes in the ‘70s (when the Cold War was in full force) and how oil prices rose ~10 fold in the decade - just how was that helping drive the Soviets into oblivion? Methinks the Soviets collapsed on their own accord - they rotted from within.

A few facts. Oil averaged $3.39 bbl in 1970. When the Soviet Union collapsed in ~1990, it averaged $23 bbl, but that was down from $37.50 bbl it averaged in 1980. So yes, oil did have some wild gyrations, but in the ~20 years before the USSR collapsed, the Soviets enjoyed vastly higher earnings. At the same time, Soviet oil production was rising. As a result, they enjoyed the dual benefits of strongly rising prices AND production. Yet the author concludes that “low prices” were the cause of the Soviet implosion? Methinks history/facts clearly show otherwise.

While the author points to Reagan and steadily falling oil prices during his 2 terms (from a inflation wracked/OPEC embargo/Jimmy Carter high in 1980 of $37.50 bbl), he blithely ascribes the decline in oil prices to a conspiracy of the US and its allies. I find that idea preposterous.

The author ignores the role that inflation had on USD fx rates and how that would have driven prices higher (and lower) as inflation rose/declined, absent any other reasons.

However, there is a more obvious/glaring reason why prices fell in the ‘80s - vast over capacity within OPEC and lack of production discipline. This intellectual “oversight” effectively crushes the author’s conspiracy theories.

How did prices fall from $37.50 to $23 in the ‘80s? It was simple - supply and demand. OPEC failed to heed basic economics (should have got a few copies of Adam Smith’s Rise of Nations) - they failed to realize that if oil spiked from $3.39 to $37.50 bbl in just 10 years that there would be huge shifts in usage/efficiencies by the consumers as a result. OPEC simply got greedy - they saw the huge rise in earnings due to rising prices. As a result, they all added capacity to drive revenues even higher - or so they (wrongly) hoped. OPEC spent hundreds of billions building new capacity. But when the bills and interest payments came due, coupled with less than anticipated demand (exacerbated by a deep recession in the early ‘80s and concurrent 20% inflation and rising energy efficiencies in the West), OPEC was forced to sell ever-more oil into a buyers market. There was no conspiracy to drive oil prices lower to gain some sort of economic advantage over the Soviets - it was just simple supply and demand at work.

Prices only rebounded after the Saudis got serious about enforcing OPEC production disciple. The Saudis did so by opening up their taps and drove prices down to $10 bbl. That caused so much economic pain in OPEC that they (finally) took production quotas seriously, balancing an over supplied market. As a result of OPEC’s new-found production discipline, coupled with the unexpected demand from BRICs (and consequential reduction of excess capacity), we saw oil rise 10 fold this decade...

For all the conspiracy theories this author offers us, the simplest explanations (i.e, supply and demand) seem much more rational explanations for oil prices. But hey, if you tend to believe conspiracy theories, facts rarely get in the way...

The real issue is from a US national security standpoint. It would put severe downward pressure on crude oil market prices, which the US has been successfully propping up for more than a decade as part of multi-pronged economic warfare against the Chinese. All the enviro yammering is just window dressing. It is geopolitics, national security and it is China.

This is the opposite of my understanding.

U.S. national security is enhanced by having new Canadian supply, now 1.7 million barrels per day and increasing to 5.0 million in twelve years, of which 800,000 will be Keystone. This will suppress world oil prices and replace Venezuelan and Middle Eastern sources with Canadian sources, decreasing revenues to hostile regions and countries.

Are you postulating that the U.S. wants to enrich Middle Eastern countries at the expense of China (and Japan, Korea, etc)? That's a new one to me and doesn't make much sense.

Could you please elaborate.

Both Rand Paul and Ted Cruz voted Yea on Cloture of the Brennan debate. Sixteen Republicans voted Nay, including Jim Inhofe.

I still don’t get how dumping a few million houses raises home prices.

Of course.

The whole article is muddle-headed, from a reference to "foreclosure houses" to "on the heals (sp) of" to "completed foreclosure preventions", as if that's a good thing, to "The drop off in foreclosure actions, however, is still higher than ... ", though the author was trying to say "Foreclosure actions, however, are still higher ...".

For a financial blog, the author appears clueless about both Finance and English.

No wonder the Democrats can con half the population.

Eagle/Ford, Bakken, Cline and Monterey are shale oil formations and are feasible.

The Green River formations are oil shale and are not feasible: some day, perhaps, but not now.

virtuous cycle of confidence

The author is parroting the socialist meme.

The "virtuous cycle" is a statist concept, originating in Europe and adopted by Bernanke, postulating that government intervention in the economy can create a virtuous cycle of improved economic performance. In a speech given before he became Chairmen, Bernanke adopted the concept and suggested that the Fed could directly cause an increase in equity prices. It is widely speculated that Bernanke has been implementing this intervention in the equity markets through the New York Fed.

This Fed action is already a failure, merely causing equity prices to disconnect from the performance of the balance of the economy.

Send that boy boinker to Tx...they’ll take care of him.

What has come over FR?

Clicking through to the Scientific American article, it becomes clear that the words "tar sands" mean you are being lied to and the words "oil sands" are an indicator of truth telling. It's like "tea bagger" as a tip-off, making it easier to ignore the propagandist.

Some truth seeps through:

(In 2011) 1.8 million barrels per day of tar sands oil resulted in the emissions of some 47.1 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent, (and) coal-fired power plants in the U.S. emitted more than two billion metric tons of CO2-equivalent.

In other words U.S. coal emits 42X the CO2 of the oils sands. Even when oil sands production increases from 1.8 to 5.0 million barrels per day by 2030, U.S. coal will still emit 15X the CO2 of oil sands ... and the U.S. will be 3.2 million barrels per day closer to energy independence.

Even if you are a AGWbot, the oil sands are a drop in the bucket.

Oil is a wonderful fuel, with high energy density.

why has production at Bakken been increasing?

Your link shows Baaken oil production of 660,000 barrels per day in late 2012, versus U.S. consumption of 20 million barrels per day.

Thanks for the insight.

Once again, posters here are confusing Shale Oil (trapped oil - Baaken) with Oil Shale (Kerogen - Green River) and oil sands (Bitumen - Alberta).

An excellent description of the differences is here.

The bottom line is that only Oil Sands is going to have a significant impact on North American energy independence, by adding another million or so barrels a day to Canadian oil exports by 2020.

Long term, Thorium is the answer.

The election of Obama and the market crash were engineere, planned.The 500 billion dollar in two hour drop in the money markets was an attack on our coutnry, an act of war. [Recall Pres Bush mentioning a financial attack on the U.S. in one of his last speeches? Well, nothing came of it because the Dems were the ones who did it.]

Geithner has been doing the bidding of someone else for awhile.

Apparently since 2007 at least by this proof.

My FR post of November 21, 2008:

“Remember when Bush called a meeting on the meltdown before the election and invited McCain and Obama? On his way to the meeting, an Obama advisor got a call from a “Goldman contact” disclosing Paulson’s game plan, which Obama then used to throw in everyone’s face and toss the meeting into turmoil. My bet is that Geithner was the originator of the leak and that this, among other things, established his bona fides with the Kennedy Wing of the Democrats (aka “Obama”). Therefore he gets elevated to Treasury Secretary. Geithner has always been doing someone else’s bidding. That’s his MO.”

a privately owned bank that makes U.S. money out of thin air per legislation

It is this power, along with the power to intervene in the market to set interest rates, that makes the Fed susceptible to the corruption demonstrated by Geithner's actions.

My post of November 21, 2008:

“Remember when Bush called a meeting on the meltdown before the election and invited McCain and Obama? On his way to the meeting, an Obama advisor got a call from a “Goldman contact” disclosing Paulson’s game plan, which Obama then used to throw in everyone’s face and toss the meeting into turmoil. My bet is that Geithner was the originator of the leak and that this, among other things, established his bona fides with the Kennedy Wing of the Democrats (aka “Obama”). Therefore he gets elevated to Treasury Secretary. Geithner has always been doing someone else’s bidding. That’s his MO.”

If the Fed got out of the business of intervening in the markets to effect "monetary policy", there would be no possibility of breach of trust by Fed officials. So long as they intervene, boys will be boys, Geithner or no Geithner.

Raise it on the rich and successful and then raise it on the $250,000 bracket... then raise it on everyone. If he can, he will.

That, of course, will require a Pelosi House and a filibuster-proof Dem Senate in 2014, which is not out of the question given the Obot media and the self-defeating GOP.

Gingrich hadn’t given it CPR

Whom do you see as the Gingrich-equivalent of 2014?

Either way, we’re losing our freedoms and those journalists who should know and spread the word, are silent on the truth ... protecting the one who would destroy even them.

So I'm gathering that you, like many other conservatives, are despondent and believe that Obama will never be held to account, by the media, by weak GOP leadership or through the (2014) ballot box.

Will there be a reckoning for the Obama administration, or is VDH dreaming?

This is a fairly objective article from an otherwise anti-Israeli Gwynne Dyer.

Well, spill the beans. Where are the “good” sites then?

I think that Anandtech is the head and shoulders above them all, if you don't ask for a review of every product in existence and are willing to dig. They start each review with a great high-level description of the state of technology relevant to the product, followed by an intensely detailed and exhaustive review. Their reviews are roughly daily, so they don't touch on that many products. For that, you will need to venture into the comments, which I have found to be level-headed and well-informed. The site does not attract those seeking instant gratification and a forum for bloviating.

Comments on tech sites, populated predominately by political liberals, are: "If you can't trust CNET, then you can't trust CBS."

Conservatives should strike now. We have always known that CBS can't be trusted. We should now connect the dots for politically low-information techies.

For example: tech reviewers in the WSJ.

The styling doesn’t even come close to competing with the mid-engined 2014 Cayman.

Let this go over the cliff with the Defense cuts. Defense has more than enough fat to withstand these cuts. Consider all those civilian contractors who vote Democrat. Future emergency Defense requests can be dealt with later. The sequester would at least be some real cuts, $3 trillion over ten years versus the $600 billion of tax increases enacted at New Year's, a 5:1 ratio of cuts to tax increases.

The bulk of longer-term necessary cuts will health care: Medicare, Medicaid and ObamaCare, which will bankrupt the country as is. The solution is to privatize all three, but this requires a Republican President and filibuster-proof Congress: 2016 at the earliest. The Democrats are never going to agree to entitlement cuts. Social Security is a smaller problem. Supposed solutions such as chained CPI assaults beneficiaries already being squeezed by under-reported CPI.

Meanwhile, going over the cliff on March 1st is a critically necessary beginning for the survival of the country.

It's time to take your medicine, defense hawks.