Breaking New Ground

by Joshua Sharf | 2:43 pm, December 31, 2010

When Kenneth Feinberg was appointed to politicize oversee the BP restitution process, many of us were worried that even under the best of circumstances, the government was forfeiting confidence in the process to gain some expediency.  Now, it turns out that Feinberg was worried, too: BP money is being used to pay $950 an hour [...]

Remind Me Again, Who Paid For This House?

by Joshua Sharf | 2:04 pm, December 31, 2010

The Denver Post reported earlier this week that someone who bought a house – and the land it sits on – managed to retain the right to demolish it and build a new house.  Gary Yourtz bought a nice, mid-century modern house at 825 S. Adams St. for $1.1 million, planning to raze the place [...]

Another insult to be proud of

by Rossputin | 6:58 am, December 31, 2010

Although it’s not nearly the feather in my cap that being named one of Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Persons in the World” was, I’m pleased to report that a Colorado leftist whose last name is perhaps not coincidentally “Dumm” has nominated one of my blog notes (to Lynn Bartels who wasn’t soliciting any such nominations) for the Stupidest Blog Post of the Year.

Bartels was polite enough to ask me for a response before running simply that part of the story and included my response in its entirety in her blog note which you can read here:
http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/2010/12/29/rossputin-blog-post-liberal-thinks-it-turned-off-hispanics/19777/#more-19777

Victory for firearms preemption in New York

by David Kopel | 1:08 am, December 31, 2010

(David Kopel) Nassau County, on Long Island, New York, enacted an ordinance which bans handguns in non-traditional colors, such as pink. The ordinance declares such firearms to be “deceptively colored.” On December 28, the Appellate Division, Second Department (the intermediate court of appeals) ruled 4–0 that the Nassau ban is preempted by New York State’s handgun licensing law. [...]

Salazar Considering Appointment to Ag Commissioner

by PerlStalker | 12:20 pm, December 30, 2010

Representative John Salazar has been asked to serve as Colorado’s Agriculture Commissioner under Governor-elect John Hickenlooper. The Pueblo Chieftain reports that Salazar is strongly considering the appointment. If he accepts, Salazar says that he’ll…

How Many Bureaucrats Does It Take To Make A Bottle Of Booze In Colorado?

by Mike Krause | 12:02 pm, December 30, 2010

Colorado Public Radio this morning aired a story on craft distilleries popping up around Colorado.  What really stands out is the astonishing number of bureaucratic hoops these risk-taking entrepreneurs have to jump through.  As CPR’s Megan Verlee reports, owners of a craft vodka distillery in Greeley, Colorado “spent two years filing applications before they ever [...]

Look who’s on the radio!

by Al Maurer | 10:49 am, December 30, 2010

Tancredo emerges from election defeat to attempt to re-invent himself as a Tea Party talk show host.

Lu Busse Charts New Course for 9.12 Group

by Ari Armstrong | 9:32 am, December 30, 2010

I caught up with Lu Busse, chair of the 9.12 Project Colorado Coalition, at a recent event sponsored by Liberty On the Rocks.Here are a few of her comments; see the video for the complete remarks!”We’re working on what we call the Colorado Legislative …

Take THAT NYT Editor!

by Jon Caldara | 8:02 am, December 30, 2010

Our newest senior fellow Professor Rob Natelson had to tell it like it is to the New York Times in this letter to the editor published December 20th:
To the Editor:
I’d like make a few observations about your article about the proposed “repeal amendment.”
First, constitutional doubts about the health care law have always been widespread and [...]

Is it a right or isn’t it?

by Rossputin | 6:47 am, December 30, 2010

For today’s reading, may I offer you my article published yesterday at the American Spectator web site (and picked up by RealClearPolitics.com) on the subject of Barack Obama’s (and other leftists’) claim that health care is a right.

I think it’s a very important topic because it begins to expose and erode the thin underpinnings of our welfare state overall, and certainly to erode the implicit claim in most Progressive policies that people have “rights” to things which must be paid for by others.

Please see “Is It a Right or Isn’t It?“, Ross Kaminsky, American Spectator, 12/29/10
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/12/29/is-it-a-right-or-isnt-it

Health Insurance Rate Hikes: Unreasonable if Excessive, Excessive if Unreasonable

by Brian Schwartz | 6:00 am, December 30, 2010

New insurance premium regulations by the Department of Health & Human Services would prohibit “unreasonable” price increases. An increase is “unreasonable” if it’s “excessive,” while “excessive” means it’s “unreasonably high.” Imagine if speed limit laws worked this way.

Mandatory insurance & Counterfeit ‘Responsibility’

by Brian Schwartz | 11:29 pm, December 29, 2010

The White House’s “individual responsibility” rhetoric masks its drive to subvert individual freedom. “Forcing people to act in a certain way inverts the very notion of responsibility …[which] arises from the fact that humans have free will, and can thus choose to act in ways that benefit — or harm — themselves.

Allow Me to Reflect on the Last 4 Years

by Jon Caldara | 6:41 pm, December 29, 2010

In case you hadn’t noticed, Governor-for-not-too-much-longer Bill Ritter has been making the rounds with the media in order to “reflect” on his 4 years in office. I figured since he gets to do it, why not me? So let’s take a trip down memory lane as I reflect on Governor Ritter’s 4 years in office…
First [...]

BlueCarp on the radio Thursday, December 30.

by David K. Williams, Jr. | 5:37 pm, December 29, 2010

Thank you to my friend Kelly Maher, of WhoSaidYouSaid.com, for asking me to ride shotgun with her as she subs for Jim Pfaff tomorrow (Thursday, December 30) from 11 a.m to noon, Mountain Time, on KLZ the Source, AM 560. (For my friends back east, that’…

What’s In Store for Politics in 2011?

by Jon Caldara | 12:36 pm, December 29, 2010

Quick, hide your wallet and your liberties, the new year is just around the corner and that means a new legislature and governor in Colorado. Tune in to Devil’s Advocate this Friday, Dec. 31st as I am joined by Denver Post political reporter Jessica Fender and Colorado Springs Gazette editorial page editor Wayne [...]

Political End Runs: How Judges violate the law (and your rights)

by CTBC Director | 9:12 am, December 29, 2010

The Constitution of the United States begins with the words “We the people.” But neither the Constitution nor “we the people” will mean anything if politicians and judges can continue to do end runs around both.
So begins a superb article by esteemed economist and commentator Thomas Sowell, published Tuesday (”Political End Runs“).
Sowell states the case [...]

Fred Singer: No proof global warming is caused by humans

by Rossputin | 9:05 am, December 29, 2010

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/28/no-proof-man-causes-global-warming

Death Panels are the logical conclusion of government involvement in health care

by Rossputin | 6:18 am, December 29, 2010

OK, they’re not actually “death panels” at all, but the title got you to keep reading…

People shouldn’t be upset at the idea of government doing what it must do to control costs once government takes control of health care (or anything else.) The recent rule issued by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services paying for end of life counseling, presumably against “heroic measures” and encouraging “pull the plug”, is not primarily objectionable because of its content but rather because it all but mirrors a provision specifically removed from Obamacare because it was politically unacceptable. So, it’s the process rather than the content that’s the big problem. 

What conservatives and libertarians should be doing with this news is not grousing about end of life counseling but instead pointing out that this is the necessary consequence of government-run health care, and that if people want health care to be paid for by taxpayer money instead of by the people actually consuming the health care services, then it’s only fair to taxpayers for government to do what it can to control costs. 

End of life decisions are not inherently objectionable.  We all must make them, with due consideration to the value of the high amount of money to be spent frequently to prolong a life  by a short amount of time. What is objectionable is that we see the spectre of government making them.  But how could it be otherwise when the claim that something is a “right” puts the government in a position of redistributing wealth to distribute that “right”?

A proposal to my Republican friends

by David K. Williams, Jr. | 10:22 pm, December 28, 2010

If the federal budget is one cent smaller in 2012 than it is in 2010, I’ll register Republican and run for precinct chair.If not, y’all register Libertarian.”Ah, but Dave, you crafty fellow, two years isn’t enough time to make a difference,” you say? T…

Bob McConnell for Senate District 8

by Al Maurer | 9:34 pm, December 28, 2010

Bob McConnell has thrown his hat in the ring to replace Senator Al White in State Senate District 8.

Another “economic development” fiasco

by Rob Natelson | 4:17 pm, December 28, 2010

A story in today’s Denver Post illustrates the waste in many, if not most, of government’s so-called “economic development” handouts.
In 2008, the City of Aurora, Colorado gave a theater company a $250,000, fully-forgivable urban-renewal loan. The company promised to bring 12,000 people a year into what the city, in its planning wisdom, had decreed [...]

We are next: DHS now calling domestic dissent "terrorist."

by David K. Williams, Jr. | 1:57 pm, December 28, 2010

A Tennessee division of the Department of Homeland Security has put the ACLU on a “terrorist watch list.”Soon, all dissent will be labeled “terrorist” by the feds.And remember all of the conservative cheer leading behind the notion that “terrorists hav…

Freeze, World Drug Police!

by Mike Krause | 12:44 pm, December 28, 2010

The New York Times has a disturbing story on mission creep by the DEA in the disastrous war on drugs. From the Times:
The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign [...]

Cult: Blizzards caused by global warming. No, really!!

by Rossputin | 6:41 am, December 28, 2010

Members of the cult of Algore, like every climate reporter for the NY Times, are desperate to convince us that people are freezing to death across Europe and stuck in blizzards in the US because of…wait for it…global warming.

Times reporter Judah Cohen penned an article a couple of days ago entitled “Bundle up, it’s global warming.”

Their pathetic desperation to try to explain how people’s frostbitten toes are due to global warming would be funny if it weren’t motivated by anti-capitalist and anti-American bias.

Even if you were to buy the alarmists grasping “science”, it’s interesting how they never take the next logical step:  If global warming can cause cooling, then the cooling should…wait for it…cool the planet, including the oceans.  In other words, like most natural phenomena we see on earth (such as, for example, too many deer creating a temporary increase in the population of mountain lions…until the deer population can no longer sustain the extra predators who then reduce their reproduction), climate change is – and has ever been – cyclical.

It’s also worth noting that the British left-wing Guardian newspaper offers perhaps the most honest assessment of one of the greatest risks of “global warming”: Certain species of butterfly are becoming more common in Scotland.  The horrors!

Let’s be clear: Climate does change.  But the idea that humans have a substantial impact on it is an exercise in massive egoism motivated by a deep-seated hatred not just of industrial society but of all true human progress.  Climate alarmists should be thought of no differently than you’d think of any other Marxists or opportunists, as naive and modestly dangerous parasites who should be dealt with through the anti-biotic of rational thinking and clear-minded voting.

“Government takeover of health care”: Lie of the year?

by Brian Schwartz | 6:00 am, December 28, 2010

PolitiFact has chosen “government takeover of health care” as the 2010 Lie of the Year. But the health care bill is a dramatic increase in government control of medicine. These add up to a good case for the bill’s being a government takeover.

Legislators: Embrace Us Please

by Jon Caldara | 5:50 pm, December 27, 2010

Like a beautiful girl who just got a mani, pedi, and a new haircut, our Citizens’ Budget is getting noticed. Take for example the Colorado Springs Gazette editorial a few weeks ago. The Gazette encouraged “all legislators, mayors, city leaders and county commissioners throughout Colorado to study the Citizens’ Budget.”
The newest media outlet to show [...]

HSBC provides propaganda and banking services for the Iranian tyrants

by David Kopel | 1:41 pm, December 27, 2010

(David Kopel) Jennifer Rubin’s Washington Post article, “A bank that proudly does business in Iran,” explains it all. As a result, I just called HSBC to cancel my credit card. Copyright © 2010 This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. The use of this feed on other websites breaches copyright. If this content is not in [...]

Less Intense Monday: Spectacular images of the power of nature

by Rossputin | 7:04 am, December 27, 2010

Due to the fact that I have a Sunday evening radio show, I’m going to move toward less demanding blogging for Mondays (since I generally write a blog note the night before it’s published.)  Instead, for Mondays, I’ll aim to guide you toward interesting and/or informative and/or entertaining items that you might not otherwise have seen.

For my first installment of Less Intense Mondays, allow me to offer you these two separate articles showing fantastic photographs of the power of nature:

First, from National Geographic, the first-ever x-ray picture of a lightning strike, captured by a specially-made camera that weighs 1500 pounds and takes 10 million, yes that’s ten million, images per second:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101223-lightning-x-rays-camera-science-technology/

And second, truly stunning (even “jaw-dropping” as the article’s title suggests) images of a “supercell” cloud formation in Montana…images which you’ve only seen anything vaguely resembling in science fiction movies:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1334672/Jaw-dropping-image-enormous-supercell-cloud-Glasgow-Montana.html

Ghosts of Constitutional Debates Past – Part II

by Joshua Sharf | 12:32 am, December 27, 2010

In Ghosts of Constitutional Debates Past, I looked at some of the things that Centinel, aka Samuel Bryan, objected to in the Constitution, and how some of his projections about how power might migrate away from the original plan seemed to parallel the claims that the Progressives have made stick in order to distort the [...]

James Discusses New Mars Novel

by Ari Armstrong | 11:53 pm, December 26, 2010

Thomas James, coauthor of a new novel about Mars, “In the Shadow of Ares,” discussed the book at a December 20 event hosted by Liberty On the Rocks.I also added the following comments to Amazon:I have been fascinated with Mars as the next frontier sinc…

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