How far will global warming alarmists go to destroy critics like Mark Steyn?

A post from Free Think U tells you everything you need to know about whether global warming is based in evidence or intimidation.

Excerpt:

The critical point in this campaign is a defamation lawsuit by global warming promoter Michael Mann against Mark Steyn, National Review, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

[…] Consider the specific argument Mann is making, as summed up in the report I linked to above.

“In the articles, Mann says in his lawsuit, the think tank and the publication ignored more than half a dozen investigations that found no scientific wrongdoing, focusing almost exclusively on the Penn State inquiry in order to call him a fraud. CEI also mentioned the National Academy of Science’s investigation, but dismissed those findings by saying the body had obtained information from Penn State, meaning the inquiry was ‘not truly independent.’ The basis mentioned by CEI to call the Penn State investigation a whitewash was stating it had only interviewed Mann, and ‘seemingly ignored the content of the emails.’”

Even more ominous, the DC Superior Court, which let the suit proceed, embraced this reasoning in its ruling.

“The CEI Defendants’ persistence despite the EPA and other investigative bodies’ conclusion that Plaintiff’s work is accurate (or that there is no evidence of data manipulation) is equal to a blatant disregard for the falsity of their statements.”

In other words, Steyn’s evaluation of Mann’s scientific claims can be legally suppressed because Steyn dares to question the conclusions of established scientific institutions connected to the government. On this basis, the DC Superior Court arrives at the preposterous conclusion that it is a violation of Mann’s rights to “question his intellect and reasoning.” That’s an awfully nice prerogative to be granted by government: an exemption against any challenge to your reasoning.

[…]Mann is attempting to install himself as a kind of American Lysenko. Trofim Lysenko was the Soviet scientist who ingratiated himself to Joseph Stalin and got his crackpot theories on genetics installed as official dogma, effectively killing the study of biology in the Soviet Union. Under Lysenko, the state had an established and official scientific doctrine, and you risked persecution if you questioned it. Mann’s libel suit is an attempt to establish that same principle here.

Mann has recently declared himself to be both a scientist and a political activist. But in attempting to intimidate his critics and suppress free debate on global warming, he is violating the fundamental rules of both science and politics. If it is a sin to doubt, then there is no science. If it is a crime to dissent, then there is no politics.

In one way I think the tactics of censors in general are interesting because they show us how Darwinism came to be accepted as “science” despite the back that it is at odds with the evidence from origin of life studies and the Cambrian explosion, not to mention molecular machinery in the cell. The science doesn’t matter if the government and the courts make it illegal to question the dogma.

Another reason never to write under your real name. Use an alias, because these people don’t play games. They will go after you in your work place and destroy your ability to earn a living. Don’t make it easy for them.

Pro-marriage event at Stanford University deemed “hate speech”, denied funding

From The College Fix.

Excerpt:

An upcoming conference organized by Stanford University’s Anscombe Society called “Communicating Values: Marriage, Family & the Media” has been dubbed “hate speech” by the college’s graduate-level student government, which refused to allow any of its student fee-funded budget to support the event.

The Anscombe Society is a conservative student group centered around traditional marriage and family values; it also encourages chastity, and tackles subjects such as sexual integrity and pornography.

According to the minutes of the student government meeting on March 5, a large group of angry students attended to protest the conference and its request for funding.

[…]Ultimately, the Graduate Student Council refused a $600 funding request: “With a vote of 10 for, 2 against, and 2 abstaining, the funding to Anscombe Society has been retracted by the GSC,” the minutes stated. What’s more, the Stanford Daily reports that the undergraduate student government also denied the Stanford Anscombe Society a $5,000 funding request last week.

According to the Anscombe Society’s website, the event aims to “help university students and young adults to promote the values of marriage, family, and sexual integrity to the broader popular culture. Featuring speakers at the forefront of this effort, the conference will allow students to network with other individuals who are willing to engage in intellectual and civil discourse about the issues of marriage, family, and sexual integrity.”

These days it seems as if college students have moved away from the traditional view of marriage in more ways than just the male-female formulation. They think that male-female marriage is too restrictive because marriage should be about being happy and being in love, not about complementary sexes. Marriage should last as long as love-feelings and happy-feelings last, it’s not about commitment and self-sacrifice and the responsibilities of parenting.  Now, the marriage means happily ever after – it means that if you have a wedding, then you are guaranteed happiness, without having any self-sacrificial responsibilities to spouses or children. It means that you can continue to be selfish, and that somehow, you and the other person will be able to keep the relationship going by just living like you’re each still single. Your spouse is there to make you happy. Your children are there to make you happy. There is nothing that marriage teaches you, because there is no design for it other than to produce happy feelings.

My view is that people who are rejecting the old definition of marriage, and the old responsibilities of husbands and wives in marriage, will never be able to produce a lasting, loving marriage. Either the challenges and responsibilities of marriage and parenting excite you, or you won’t have a real marriage that lasts. If you are going into the the thing with the attitude that there are no rules and responsibilities, and that it’s all about you and your feelings, you will fail. You can have a wedding, but it’s not going to magically produce a permanent, exclusive, life-giving union. Marriage is a specification, and you can’t magically implement the specification with a big wedding, any more than you save enough for retirement by winning the lottery. There is a right way to do it and a wrong way. Smashing all the rules is the wrong way.

Congressman Trey Gowdy holds Obama accountable for lawlessness and abuse of power

[youtube.com=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw0AsBanu-o]

Rep. Trey Gowdy took Obama to task for his lawless behavior in a speech that drew a standing ovation. The Blaze reported on the speech, and I’ll quote some it here for those who cannot watch the 5-minute video above.

Excerpt:

Ignoring President Barack Obama’s veto threat, the House voted on Wednesday for a bill that would expedite congressional lawsuits against the chief executive for failure to enforce federal laws.

The vote was 233-181 in the Republican-led House as GOP lawmakers excoriated Obama for multiple changes to his 4-year-old health care law, steps he’s taken to allow young immigrants to remain in the United States and the administration’s resistance to defend the federal law banning gay marriage.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., sponsor of the ENFORCE the Law Act, delivered a fiery speech and read a series of statements by Obama when he was an Illinois senator in which he warned of the encroachment of the executive on the powers of the other branches of government.

“How does going from being a senator to a president rewrite the Constitution?” Gowdy asked. “What’s different from when he was a senator? Mr. Speaker, I don’t think there’s an amendment to the Constitution that I’ve missed. I try to keep up with those with regularity.”

Gowdy went on to argue that “process matters” in law enforcement, noting that evidence gathered with a legitimate search warrant is thrown out if an officer so much as accidentally checks the wrong box on the application.

“Even though he was well-intended, even though he had good motivations, even though he got the evidence — because process matters,” he added.

“We all swore an allegiance to the same document that the president swears allegiance to, to faithfully execute the law,” Gowdy continued. “If a president does not faithfully execute the law… what are our remedies?”

He then argued that Congress should do exactly what then-Sen. Obama suggested before he was president of the United States: “To go to the Supreme Court and have the Supreme Court say once and for all: ‘We don’t pass suggestions in this body. … We don’t pass ideas — we pass laws. And we expect them to be faithfully executed.”

I understand that in a lot of banana republics, the Supreme Ruler does whatever he pleases. But this is America. We have Constitution and separation of powers. Changing laws after they are passed for political reasons (mid-term elections) is not legal. Candidate Obama would never have done this, but President Obama does it all the time.