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It should come as no surprise that MoveOn.org astroturfed the shit out of the Freeh interview on 60 Minutes....

New York Times:The Senate Energy and Commerce Committee approved a measure on Wednesday to open the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas production, moving it an important step closer to becoming official. The committee...

"Mr. Floatie," a man in a feces costume, is no longer a mayoral candidate in Victoria, BC. Mr. Floatie, a community activist who dresses up in a feces costume to decry the pumping of raw sewage into the waters off...

I've been writing about free speech of late because some of SDP's critics are so obviously hostile to the idea. Fortunately these would-be bullies are about as threatening as the Smurfs discussed in my last post. NCATE is another matter....

ssAnne Applebaum, author of Gulag, has a great piece in the Washington Post contrasting the trial of Saddam Hussein with the Nuremburg trials in Germany following World War II. Excerpt:Yet Nuremberg was, in retrospect, a huge success, and as the...

Deal 'opens the door' to wind power

DEFINITELY A WIN-WIN-WIN for South Dakota's Economy!

One of the biggest hinderances to the development of more wind power in South Dakota has been a lack of enough transmission line capacity to get the electricity to where it's needed.

There is a positive logic to the addition of a new coal-burning plant also. The US has an abundance of coal, and large deposits of high quality low-sulfur coal are just to the west in Wyoming. There is a synergy that comes into play here with a three-way synergistic development of South Dakota's utility and transportation infrastructure which is catalyzed by the planned construction of a new coal-burning power plant at Big Stone.

The first element of this synergy is the expansion of the DM&E Railroad, which, in spite of the usual opposition from envirowacko activist groups and assorted other NIMBY (Non-In-My-Backyard types pushed through approval of extending it's lines into the Wyoming coal fields, and upgrade of its existing mainlines to handle the greatly increased traffic that results from this. (See note 1 in extended entry) This increases the availability of coal for new plants.

With the abundance of coal, and modern abatement technology, it is possible to burn low-sulfur coal with a minimum amount of air pollution, plus it helps to increase the electric power capacity, which is an essential positive factor for continued economic growth in the area. (See Note 2)

Finally, this proposed coal plant will bring in a significantly serious excess in electrical power transmission capacity, above and beyound the needs of the new plant. This excess capacity is available for the development of large(r) scale wind turbine developments, which (a) provides yet more electricity, (b) is a clean, renewable energy source, and (c) provides yet another boost to the local economic structure.

So, what's the "win-win-win"? More needed electrical power, use of domestic coal instead of imported oil, and the enabled development of even cleaner wind power capacity. Three birds with one "Big Stone". Not too bad.

Porky from The Little Rascals has died....

Illegals at military bases raise concerns

Scores of illegal aliens working as cooks, laborers, janitors, even foreign-language instructors have been seized at military bases around the country in the past year, raising concerns in some quarters about security and troop safety. The aliens did not work directly for the military but for private contractors, as part of a large-scale effort by the Pentagon to outsource many routine rear-echelon jobs and free up the troops to concentrate on waging war.

IF the bean counters had ANY security awareness at all, this could not be happening. If there was security awareness, the cost of checking security on these outsourced jobs would more than offset any hypothetical savings, to say nothing of the cost if just one of them turned out to be an Islamofascist operative with a plan.

Anothe case of "penny wise, pound foolish". Like the old comis strip character Pogo observed: "We have met the enemy, and he is us!"

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