Free Republic

11-03-07 When an angry Enrico Mattei coined the phrase “the seven sisters” to describe the Anglo-Saxon companies that controlled the Middle East’s oil after the second world war, the founder of Italy’s modern energy industry could not have imagined the profound shift in power that would occur barely half a century later. Nader Sultan, former chief executive of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, answered our questions on the implications of the shift in power to oil and gas companies from the emerging world. As oil prices have trebled over the past four years, a new group of oil and gas companies has...

Remember after 9-11, when Bill Maher got into some trouble for claiming that the Islamo-nazis, whatever else they were, were courageous? After all, anyone who is willing to fly a plane into a building must be very brave. But this only goes to show what has happened to language and its relationship to intelligible, which is to say, higher, realities. For example, the cardinal virtues -- prudence, justice, courage, and temperance -- represent one such intelligible reality. But children and even (or shall we say, especially) college students are no longer taught about intelligible realities. Rather, they are specifically taught...

NOTE: I don't know if this is on Youtube yet, or not] Wednesday, March 14, 2007 Global warming is not a crisis Speaking for the motion: Michael Crichton, Richard S. Lindzen, Philip Stott Speaking against the motion: Brenda Ekwurzel, Gavin Schmidt, Richard C.J. Somerville Moderator: Brian Lehrer SOLD OUT MODERATOR: Brian Lehrer is host of the highly-acclaimed “Brian Lehrer Show” heard weekday mornings on WNYC® New York Public Radio®, 820 AM, 93.9 FM and wnyc.org. He is also an award-winning author and documentary producer. Lehrer holds masters degrees in journalism and public health/environmental sciences. SPEAKERS FOR THE MOTION: Michael Crichton...

Excerpt: "..efforts to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals have been uneven, at best. ..And he described the United States as the "second stingiest" among nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in providing assistance.." SAN FRANCISCO­ Challenges such as poverty, climate change and nuclear proliferation pose global risks that require scientists and engineers to join with political and business leaders in a concerted search for solutions, AAAS President John P. Holdren said Thursday. In his Presidential Address at the AAAS Annual Meeting, Holdren described a world poised at an unprecedented moment of decision: Without swift and urgent...

[In his SOTU speech] .. GW proposed to cut US consumption of gasoline by 20% in ten years, as an effort to combat global warming. This was a stroke of genius, and I couldn't stop laughing! So far, nobody seems to have decrypted the code. This has nothing whatsoever to do with global warming. The US uses about 25% of global oil production now, and about 20% (or less) of CO2 comes from automobiles - more comes from cows (recent news) and the worst culprit is coal used to produce electricity, because the Dems and Greens have a severe case...

Before the State of the Union address which comes on at 9:00 PM tonight, you may be interested in listening to Randy Isaac (of the American Scientific Affiliation - A Fellowship of Christians in Science) between 8pm to 8:30pm Eastern time on The Frank Pastore Show which is heard in Los Angeles weekday afternoons on 99.5 KKLA. Click here to listen live at 8:PM eastern: http://www2.kkla.com/listen/ An Unlikely Alliance Elite scientists and evangelicals put aside their differences to save the Earth. Q& A: Why Scientists Need Christians WEB EXCLUSIVE By Samantha Henig Newsweek Updated: 12:13 p.m. ET Jan 17, 2007...

RUSH: Okay, time for the real story of Thanksgiving. I want to precede this by sharing with you -- and I want to bounce off of our last call, Suzie. Sometimes she has trouble being optimistic. Now, I don't know that this would qualify as something about which you can run around and feel really optimistic about. Something struck me the other day. (It strikes me a lot, by the way.) I went to a dinner party on Friday night, and it was a buffet here where I live before I had to go over to the Breakers Hotel and...

Reason Magazine Blogger Finds Pleasure in Tears of Rick Santorum's 8-year-old Daughter Because the libertarian universe has no place for the vulnerable, weak, or the dependent--since none are autonomous adult-choosers in search of virtual kiddie porn--it has no qualms in providing a forum in which children and their families can be verbally abused and have profanities hurled at them. Read and weep Julian Sanchez's "Your Tears Are So Yummy and Sweet" in which the writer says he finds joy in the tears of Rick Santorum's eight-year-old daughter, who is pictured crying next to her father as he gives his concession...

Has Our Time Come? http://www.hereticalideas.com/ A **new study from the Cato Institute [see link below] suggests that libertarians might be the new swing vote. The libertarian vote is in play. At some 13 percent of the electorate, it is sizable enough to swing elections. Pollsters, political strategists, candidates, and the media should take note of it. After examining the relevant polling data, Cato concludes that libertarians and libertarian sympathizers constitute somewhere between 10 and 20% of the American population. Some explanations are offered as to why libertarians constitute such a bigger constituency than one might expect. First is that libertarians...

Sometime during the Autumn of 1986 I found myself sitting at the kitchen table of a member of the Illinois House of Representatives who was running for Congress. The reason for being at that table with candidate Dennis Hastert was to rehearse for a debate with his Democratic opponent. Hastert won the debate and won the seat. Shift forward 12 years. On December 19, 1998 I was sitting in a hotel room in Jakarta, Indonesia. In 1998 the GOP, then led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, was supposed to pick up seats in that mid-term election, but ended up losing five...

Christian researcher defends science, faith Dr. Francis Collins led the government quest to deliver the first draft of human DNA in 2000. The doctor-researcher runs a federal institute that funnels $480 million to genetics studies. But right now, God is uppermost on his mind. A devout Christian, Collins has written "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief." [1] The book, which is being released this week, argues that faith in a divine creator can coexist with sound science, including the overwhelming evidence backing evolution. "It is time to call a truce in the war between science and...

C. S. Lewis on Creation and Evolution: The Acworth Letters, 1944-1960 Gary B. Ferngren Department of History Oregon State University Corvallis, OR 97331 Ronald L. Numbers Department of the History of Medicine University of Wisconsin 1300 University Avenue Madison, WI 53706-1532 From: PSCF 48 (March 1996): 28-33. In his voluminous publications, C.S. Lewis infrequently addressed the subject of creation and evolution, and on such occasions he usually endorsed some version of theistic evolution. In a series of previously unpublished letters to his friend Captain Bernard Acworth, written between 1944 and 1960, Lewis explained at some length his views on the...

Starting at 10AM ET, live from Washington, Rush moderates a discussion featuring the brains behind "24" -- Joel Surnow, Robert Cochran and Howard Gordon -- your favorite "24" cast members, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Heritage Foundation analysts, more...

Flock of Dodos, a new documentary on the controversy between Intelligent Design and evolution, debuted last week at the Tribeca Film Festival. It’s a fine example of its genre, taking on a subject that is important and controversial (if occasionally dry), and treating it in a way that will compel broad interest. The insult in the title is not directed at just one side of the dispute: It lampoons both the supporters of ID, who are wrong on their pet issue, and the evolutionists, who are sometimes dismissive, inept, and arrogant. The movie’s creator and narrator is Robert Olson, a...

Brian Lamb taking calls for one hour from enlisted military personel and contractors working in Iraq. This is a replay from the Morning Journal program between 7 and 8 AM this morning. Tune in now to hear the calls!

<p>Ahmad Chalabi, Iraq's deputy prime minister and head of the Iraqi National Congress, arrives today on a visit to Washington and New York, his first trip to the United States in nearly two years. The official American invitation reflects a recognition that Chalabi is among Iraq's most effective political figures and a repudiation of an earlier, perverse U.S. effort to "marginalize," if not destroy, him.</p>

Andrea-Shea King show Guests include Cliff Kinkaid of AIM Listen live streaming audio here: http://www.askshow.com/ She mentioned Free Republic and "Freepers" between 9 and 9:30 PM. Both she and Kinkaid also discussed Free Republic between 9:45 PM and 10 PM. If you missed this discussion, you may access tonights show from her archives.

Thermodynamics and Money by Peter Huber In his day M. King Hubbert was a great geologist who spent his life studying the planet's deposits of oil and gas. But as he got older, he simply lost it. His "peak oil" theory--which many people are citing these days--is a case study in junk economics. Hubbert was born in 1903. By 1949 he had concluded that the fossil-fuel era was going to end, and quite soon. Global production would peak around 2000, he predicted, and would decline inexorably thereafter. By 1980 the aging Hubbert was certain that the impending crisis "was unique...

From: Laurie Mylroie sam11@erols.com Iraq News Tue, 25 Oct 2005 15:04:26 -0400 Robert Kagan [link below] reminds us of the origin of the view that Iraq retained large quantities of weapons proscribed by UNSCR 687, the formal cease-fire to the 1991 Gulf War. Following that war, it was long believed that the bulk of Iraq's WMD was destroyed in the month-long bombing campaign that began the U.S.-led assault to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. It was further assumed that the UN weapons inspectors, UNSCOM, were merely mopping up what remained. But in August 1995, as Iraq was pressing UNSCOM to...

Tamara Chalabi, Democratize Oil Revenues, Open Democracy Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 12:11:30 -0400 Iraq’s people vote on their draft constitution on 15 October. A single sentence in the document may be the key to its success, says Tamara Chalabi. [Click above link to access the hot links within this commentary]: Hard times may still continue in Iraq. However, the hopes for social and political justice, as well as resolving the problem of federalism and containing the violent insurgency, might reside in chapter 4, article 109 of the draft constitution. It simply states that: “Oil and gas is the property...