A few weeks ago at Minyanville, John Mauldin wrote: The EU is backed into a corner. They have this treaty that says governments will act in certain ways. Greece is flaunting that treaty. Everyone acts as if Greece defaulting on its debt would be the end of the EU. Will the EU force Greece to […]
Author Archive | Jim Lindgren
Philip Hamburger’s New SSRN Paper Provides Evidence Against Incorporation
By Jim Lindgren on February 26, 2010 1:50 pm in Constitutional History, Guns, History, Supreme Court
One of the issues in the McDonald gun rights case before the US Supreme Court is whether the Privileges or Immunities clause of the 14th Amendment was intended to incorporate the Second Amendment. In a new paper available on SSRN, historian Philip Hamburger argues that incorporation was not intended: What was meant by the Fourteenth […]
Jim Cramer Analyzes the Proposed New Banking Rules
During the second half-hour of Mad Money on CNBC tonight, Jim Cramer has a revealing criticism of the Obama Administration’s proposed banking rules. He concludes that the collapse was not the result of proprietary trading by banks, but rather mainly because of bad real estate loans. Cramer sees the proposal as targeting those who are […]
FHA Slightly Tightens Loan Requirements
Instead of letting housing prices find the natural market-clearing price, many in the government have been supporting the efforts of those trying to reinflate the housing bubble. The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) has been backing up to half of the mortgage market in some locales — allowing ridiculously low down payments of 3.5%, plus allowing […]
Ten Unanswered Questions in the Flight 253 Summary
On Thursday the White House released a summary of a preliminary report on the attempted bombing of a Christmas flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. I was disappointed by the lack of a clear description of what happened. Indeed, the attempted bomber is barely mentioned. It reads like a document written by bureaucrats for bureaucrats […]
If You Like Your Health Plan, You Will NOT Be Able to Keep It
I like my employer’s health plan. Today I learned that under both the Senate and the House bills, I won’t be able to keep my plan. Both bills require reductions in health reimbursement benefits under my plan. Both the Senate and the House health bills slash a significant part of my employer’s health plan — […]
Michael Mann Should Not Be Investigated by Penn State
By Jim Lindgren on December 15, 2009 12:25 am in Academia, Climate Change, Environment, Politicizing Science
According to press reports, Penn State University is conducting an inquiry to determine whether it should institute a formal ethical investigation of Michael Mann, the Penn State professor who was the lead author of the paper that invented the “Hockey Stick.” At issue are CRU emails and his role in ClimateGate. Frankly, I am not […]
“And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords”: A Planetary One-Child Policy?
Diane Francis, the Editor at Large of the Financial Post (Canada), argues for taking away basic human reproductive rights: The “inconvenient truth” overhanging the UN’s Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world. A planetary law, such as China’s one-child policy, is the only way […]
More on “Trick” Meaning “Clever Thing to Do”
One of the more controversial statements in the CRU emails is Phil Jones’s using a “trick” to “hide the decline.” Some new discussions of the trick: 1. While downloading some data from GISS, I came across a clearly innocuous use of the word trick, perhaps written by James Hansen: The trick was to find the […]
“Stossel” premieres tonight on Fox Business Channel
John Stossel’s new show premieres tonight on Fox Business Channel at 8pm ET. His topic is global warming. He has called the opening film shown to delegates at the Copenhagen conference “fear-mongering.” Here it is: Please Help the World — COP15 Opening Film
Europol Reports Massive Fraud in the Carbon Credits Market
Europol, the European police consortium, has issued the following press release: The Hague, 09 December 2009 Carbon Credit fraud causes more than 5 billion euros damage for European Taxpayer The European Union (EU) Emission Trading System (ETS) has been the victim of fraudulent traders in the past 18 months. This resulted in losses of approximately […]
The Precautionary Principle
Last night I was talking with a colleague about writing something on the “Precautionary Principle.” This morning I see John Miller at the Corner writing about a Tom Friedman column pushing that very principle. After raising Dick Cheney’s views on meeting low-probability threats from Al Qaeda and quoting Cass Sunstein on the precautionary principle, Friedman […]
Some of the “Homogenized” Temperature Data is False
By Jim Lindgren on December 8, 2009 5:43 pm in Academia, Climate Change, Environment, Politicizing Science
When the CRU at East Anglia disclosed that it had lost some of the raw temperature data, leaving only the “homogenized” data, some honest commentators expressed the hope that the homogenizing was competently done. Anyone who has been following Climate Audit for the last few years knows that at least some of the adjustments to […]
Physicists Ask American Physical Society to Rescind Its Statement on Global Warming Because It Was Based on “Cheat[ing]” and “Corrupted” Work
By Jim Lindgren on December 7, 2009 2:29 am in Academia, Climate Change, Environment, Politicizing Science
While the wider world is just beginning to realize that the subfield of paleoclimatology is in shambles (and has been for the last decade), scientists in related disciplines are increasingly fighting back against the shoddy work and orthodoxy that was foisted on them. A small group, including several prominent physicists, are asking the American Physical […]
Steven Hayward on ClimateGate
Steven Hayward (of AEI) has an excellent article in the Weekly Standard on the CRU scandal (tip to Powerline and Adler below). Hayward concludes: The distinction between utterly politicized scientists such as Jones, Mann, and NASA’s James Hansen, and other more sober scientists has been lost on the media and climate campaigners for a long […]