David Limbaugh points out another intolerant from teh secular left:

It seems the mainstream media's favorite pastime is to ridicule Sarah Palin. Of all the screeds I've read, I don't think any are snarkier than the Washington Post's Sally Quinn's "On Faith" blog post "Sarah Palin's 'rogue' Christianity."

Do we need further proof of the secular orientation of our dominant media culture than the fact that Quinn, an avowed atheist, pens the Post's "On Faith" blog? That would be like featuring a column by Fidel Castro on free enterprise and individual liberties.

On her mini-bio, Quinn writes: "I announced to my parents when I was 13 that I was an atheist. And I was a committed atheist all of my life. My view was that more evil had been done in the name of religion than anything else in the world. I saw no redeeming value in it at all. Then I met Jon Meacham and we began talking. No, Jon didn't convert me, but he did convince me that religion was not a subject to be dismissed or disdained."

If that's true, why did Quinn devote her entire blog post to dismissing and disdaining Sarah Palin's profession of faith in her book, "Going Rogue"? I must admit, though, it's difficult to tell whether Quinn is motivated more by her disdain for Sarah Palin, whom she has a history of berating, or mainstream Christianity.

Looks like many of today's scientists are more political than factual:

Officials at a key global warming research center in the United Kingdom have authenticated a series of e-mails and other documents apparently taken from their computer system by a hacker, but they cannot explain what scientists in internal exchanges meant by references to a "trick" that would "hide the decline" of global temperatures nor by instructions to delete contrary data.

Author James Delingpole writes in a London Telegraph column the most damaging revelations indicate climate-change scientists may have "manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause."

According to the Australian Investigate magazine, the 62 megabyte Zip file with documents, e-mail exchanges and other information from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit apparently was posted by an unidentified hacker on a Russian web server.

One e-mail said: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd (sic) from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Another expressed internal doubts: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."

Further, an e-mail exchange suggested the suppression of information: "Can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment – minor family crisis."

"And, perhaps most reprehensibly," Delingpole writes, "a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority."

He cites an e-mail: "This was the danger of always criticizing the skeptics for not publishing in the 'peer-reviewed literature.' Obviously, they found a solution to that – take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering 'Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board …What do others think?"

Myron Ebell, of the GlobalWarming.org website where "cooler heads prevail," said the e-mails are "shocking."

"Its kind of interesting to learn that petty politics seems to be more prevalent in the scientific community than in the political community," he said.

The documents, he said, "raise a huge number of questions about the integrity of a lot of people in the alarmist community.

"What I've seen there is a very strong effort to manage the issue by scientists and not as a scientific issues. It's very improper," he said. " One of the criticisms is that we need scientists to be scientist, and policy can be handled in public debate."

Cory Heidelberger will not accept the truth of Natural Law as applied to economics. Ilana Mercer presents it to argue on behalf of "property rights"...a natural right that Cory has a hard time understanding:

Going against the GOP grain, fleetingly, Dick Armey took on a former Clinton lackey named David Goodfriend on CNBC's "The Kudlow Reports." To make his argument against the encroaching command economy, Armey, who holds a Ph.D. in economics, mentioned that economist Ludwig von Mises had crushed the socialists in the great calculation debate.

Another economist called Bryan Caplan (disapprovingly) parsed the Mises proof thus:

"Government ownership of the means of production renders economic calculation impossible. If the state owns all of the capital goods, there will be no market for capital goods; with no market, no market prices [can arise]; no market prices [means] no way to calculate profit-and-loss. QED."

Far be it from me to expect the media front- men and women of the GOP to understand why the rational allocation of resources in state-run systems is virtually impossible. Even less likely is this cadre to crack open a von Mises or von Hayek volume – or, for that matter, consult WND's Vox Day – for the answers.

But there is no good reason why Republicans can't turn their stuttering attempts around by mastering plain, principled arguments for private property.

Why are privately owned homes cared for and public housing trashed? Why do government-controlled forests burn each year at tremendous costs to the people and property they abut, while privately managed forests are spared? Why did crops rot in the collective farms run by the old Soviet communist system, but not in capitalist, commercial farms?

Government-controlled resources go to seed precisely because they are not privately owned.

Entrusted with the management of assets you don't own, have no stake in – on behalf of millions of people you don't know, don't care about, are unaccountable to and who have no real recourse against your mismanagement except to whine like wimps – how long before your performance plummets?

Property-rights economist Armen A. Alchian unpacks it for us:

"Under socialism, government agents – those whom the government assigns – exercise control over resources. The rights of these agents to make decisions about the property they control are highly restricted. People who think they can put the resources to more valuable uses cannot do so by purchasing the rights because the rights are not for sale at any price. Because socialist managers do not gain when the values of the resources they manage increase, and do not lose when the values fall, they have little incentive to heed changes in market-revealed values. The uses of resources are therefore more influenced by the personal characteristics and features of the officials who control them."

In other words, to the extent that vestiges of private property and its ethics are currently present in health care, these will be supplanted by the collective "wisdom" of central planners like Harry Reid.

Larry Elder makes a great point with a history lesson you will not get in the Progressive's government schools:

"The political risks of failure are pretty high."

A former congressional aide offered this ominous assessment following the House of Representatives' passage of "health-care reform." Warning to the Senate: President Obama and his party face political catastrophe if you fail to do your part so that the president can sign a bill!

Nonsense.

The political risks of success are much, much higher. Taxes would go up – and not just on "the rich." And since "the rich" provide jobs, they would hire fewer people, spend less on their businesses and take fewer risks. Costs would explode beyond government estimates – which conveniently limit the estimated price tag to only the first decade.

Expect insurance companies to deny requests for medical treatment at a greater rate than today. Why? The bill would require insurers to take people with pre-existing illnesses, so denying requests for treatment would be the only potent weapon to reduce costs. And since those with pre-existing illnesses could not be denied coverage, people would simply wait until they required care before getting insurance – only to drop it and risk paying fines once they were treated.

Government eventually will start "controlling costs" by rationing care – denying requests; imposing waiting times for treatment; and withholding treatment from those with "bad" lifestyles (e.g., those who smoke cigarettes or those who fail to exercise and eat "appropriately") and those considered too old to "sufficiently benefit."

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, during the Great Depression, launched the New Deal – a blinding array of expansive and expensive government programs designed to "rescue" the economy. Obama, as did FDR, calls this expansion necessary in order to achieve economic recovery. Government expansion – in this case, Obamacare – and economic prosperity supposedly go hand in hand.

Henry Morgenthau served as FDR's treasury secretary. Thus Morgenthau, who served from 1934 to 1945, was to FDR what current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is to Obama. Morgenthau wrote in 1939: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt to boot!"

Political Armageddon if Obamacare fails? No. A recent Rasmussen poll shows more "likely voters" opposed than in favor. Preventing Obama from being Obama is job security for both the president and the congressional Democrats.

Ann Coulter points out the silliness of the diversity nuts, and has a solution, if we still have a separation of powers in DC:

Among the worst aspects of America's "diversity" is that liberals' reaction to a heterogeneous population is to create a pecking order based on alleged victimhood – as described in electrifying detail in my book, "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America."

In modern America, the guilty are sanctified, while the innocent never stop paying – including with their lives, as they did at Fort Hood this month. Points are awarded to aspiring victims for angry self-righteousness, acts of violence and general unpleasantness.

But liberals celebrate diversity only in the case of superficial characteristics like race, gender, sexual preference and country of origin. They reject diversity when we need it, such as in "diversity" of legal forums.

After conferring with everyone at Zabar's, Obama decided that if a standard civilian trial is good enough for Martha Stewart, then it's good enough for the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. So Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is coming to New York!

Mohammed's military tribunal was already under way when Obama came into office, stopped the proceedings and, eight months later, announced that Mohammed would be tried in a federal court in New York.

In a liberal's reckoning, diversity is good when we have both Muslim jihadists and patriotic Americans serving in the U.S. military. But diversity is bad when Martha Stewart and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are subjected to different legal tribunals to adjudicate their transgressions.

Terrorists tried in civilian courts will be entitled to the whole panoply of legal protections accorded Stewart or any American charged with a crime, such as the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial, the right to exclude evidence obtained in violation of Miranda rights, the right to a speedy trial, the right to confront one's accusers, the right to a change of venue, the right to examine the evidence against you, and the right to subpoena witnesses and evidence in one's defense.

Members of Congress have it in their power to put an end to this lunacy right now. If they don't, they are as complicit in Mohammed's civilian trial as the president. Article I, Section 8, and Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution give Congress the power to establish the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts and to create exceptions to that jurisdiction.

Congress could pass a statute limiting federal court jurisdiction to individuals not subject to trial before a military tribunal. Any legislator who votes "nay" on a such a bill will be voting to give foreign terrorists the same legal rights as U.S. citizens – and more legal rights than members of the U.S. military are entitled to.

Because of hard economic times, the state government can no longer afford to increase economic activity by selling products made in South Dakota:

The Made In South Dakota Internet site is about to become window shopping only.

The Rounds administration is removing the shopping cart function.

When the change takes effect later this year, consumers no longer will be able to use the state government Web site to directly buy gift certificates and private goods such as jewelry, furniture, food, dŽcor, music and apparel.

The Made In South Dakota pages won't go away, however. Goods still will be on display, but buyers will be on their own to make the purchases through other avenues.

State government's money woes drove the change.

Managing the site and promoting it cost state government about $48,000 annually, according to a spokeswoman for the Governor's Office of Economic Development, the agency that runs the site, www.madeinsouthdakota.com.

Of course, we should understand that "free" marketing through government is not a "free market capitalistic" process. Lee Schoenbeck tried to address that:

State government sales of goods came under direct fire in the 2006 session of the Legislature. Leading the charge was Sen. Lee Schoenbeck, R-Watertown.

He sponsored a resolution that sought to put a constitutional amendment on the election ballot that would have limited government sales. He also persuaded the Senate to pass legislation that would have set limits and requirements, but the measure, SB188, was killed in a House committee.

Schoenbeck's efforts were directly opposed by Brent Wilbur, a contract lobbyist for the governor, as well as others. Schoenbeck was supported by the South Dakota Retailers Association and the South Dakota arm of the National Federation of Independent Business.

Why should the taxpayers fund a contract lobbyist for the governor whose purpose is to increase funding that will end up increasing taxes?

The most anti of the anti-Americans has to be the ACLU:

Eric Holder called his decision to try the suspected plotters of 9/11 in New York City “the toughest decision I’ve had to make as attorney general.” It was unarguably the most controversial one. In my opinion, it was also the stupidest one. The decision has rightly received plenty of criticism, but what has not been talked about is the months of lobbying behind closed doors that made this happen. Meanwhile, one of the major players responsible for pushing this is popping the cork and cheering the decision.

That the ACLU cheers this latest attack on American national security is no surprise. After all, they are up to their ears in making sure Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his friends get sprung, although the mainstream media seems to be ignoring the ACLU’s role. I wrote last year at Pajamas Media that the “John Adams Project” would undoubtedly play a role in securing three hots and a cot for Khalid Sheik Mohammed while he awaits his day in an American court:

What is it? In a nutshell, the ACLU has assembled a “Dream Team” of attorneys with an $8.5 million budget to defend terrorists currently held at Guantanamo. Who’s the primary object of the ACLU’s affection? Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

The ACLU, true to form, impugns the professionalism and competence of men and women of infinitely more honor than their accusers by referring to tribunals as a “kangaroo courts.” But could the ACLU really be so scandalized that this mass murderer will stand before a military tribunal? Could the ACLU truly be standing up for his “fundamental rights”?

What is the true purpose of a multi-million-dollar campaign to get KSM off the hook?

The ACLU explains: “The ACLU chose to focus on Mohammed’s defense,” Romero said, because he appears to be “the government’s top priority in the prosecution. And whether or not they are able to convict Khalid Sheik Mohammed under these rules may well determine the fate of the almost 300 other men who are detained at Guantanamo.”

So that’s it. The ACLU wants to set KSM and 300 other terrorists free or at least make it impossible for the tribunals to serve their function. Because KSM is the worst of the worst, because he is the terrorist in custody most responsible for 9/11, the ACLU is his champion.

So is it really any surprise that the ACLU would be reaching around to pat itself on the back? This is a major victory for the organization.  The rest of America should pause and consider the Pandora’s box that has been opened. Extremist groups like the American Civil Liberties Union are willfully plowing full speed ahead on dangerous roads with blinders on. Sadly, we are governed by individuals influenced and swayed by such groups.

Walter E. Williams also understands that both political parties favor big government:

Last Tuesday, I had the pleasurable task of being master of ceremonies for the Atlas Economic Research Foundation dinner in Washington, D.C., that celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Founded in 1981, the Atlas Foundation assists the formation of free-market think tanks around the world to spread the ideas of personal liberty, private property rights and limited government. So far, they have been successful in at least 70 countries. Attending the two-day celebration were think-tank representatives from many of these countries, including those from Croatia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mozambique, South Korea, Russia and Brazil.

Alan Kors, University of Pennsylvania history professor, gave the evening's keynote address. What he revealed about the dereliction and character weakness of academics, intellectuals, media elites and politicians is by no means complimentary, but worse than that, dangerous. Professor Kors said that over the years, he has frequently asked students how many deaths were caused by Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong and their successors. Routinely, they gave numbers in the thousands. Kors says that's equivalent to saying the Nazis are responsible for the deaths of just a few hundred Jews. But here's the record: Nazis were responsible for the deaths of 20 million of their own people and those in nations they conquered. Between 1917 and 1983, Stalin and his successors murdered, or were otherwise responsible for the deaths of, 62 million of their own people. Between 1949 and 1987, Mao Zedong and his successors were responsible for the deaths of 76 million Chinese.

Professor Kors asks, why are the horrors of Nazism so well-known and widely condemned, but not those of socialism and communism? For decades after World War II, people have hunted down and sought punishment for Nazi murderers. How much hunting down and seeking punishment for Stalinist and Maoist murderers has there been? In Europe, especially Germany, hoisting the swastika-emblazoned Nazi flag is a crime. It's acceptable to hoist and march under a flag emblazoned with the former USSR's hammer and sickle. Even in the U.S., it's acceptable to praise mass murderers, as Anita Dunn, President Obama's communications director, did in a commencement address for St. Andrews Episcopal High School at Washington National Cathedral where she said Mao was one of her heroes. Whether it's the academic community, the media elite or politicians, there is a great tolerance for the ideas of socialism – a system that has caused more deaths and human misery than all other systems combined.

Academics, media elites and leftist politicians both in the U.S. and Europe protested the actions and military buildup of President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately the breakup of the Soviet Union. Recall the leftist hissy fit when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire and predicted that communism would wind up on the trash heap of history.