Kentucky judge finds Constitution unconstitutional

This just in from Legal Fantasies Division of the Franklin Circuit Court:

FRANKFORT, Ky.—A Franklin circuit judge Wednesday declared unconstitutional a reference to God in a 2006 law creating the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security.

In an 18-page order, Judge Thomas Wingate said the General Assembly created an official government position on God when it passed a law requiring the office to acknowledge “the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth.”

Wingate said it is clear that the purpose of the language wasn't to celebrate the historical reasons for “our great nation's survival in the face of terror and war,” but instead declared publicly that the position of the state was that an “Almighty God exists and that the function of that God is to protect us from our enemies.”

“The Commonwealth's history does not exclude God from the statutes, but it has never permitted the General Assembly to demand that its citizens depend on Almighty God,” Wingate wrote.

Well, first of all, the law doesn't demand anything of anybody. It is simply an acknowledgment of what the legislature perceives (correctly, for the most part) about its citizens. But, more importantly, did Judge Wingate bother to check out the Preamble to Kentucky's own Constitution?

We, the people of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberties we enjoy, and invoking the continuance of these blessings, do ordain and establish this Constitution.

If the General Assembly is not permitted to "require" its citizens to "depend on Almighty God," as his opinion states the law in question does, then why does it's own Constitution "require" them to be grateful to Him?

Someone should challenge the Kentucky Constitution in court to see if Judge Wingate finds the Constitution itself unconstitutional.

As we warm ourselves by burning another mistaken global warming report...

Those of us here in God's country who are just now thawing ourselves out from the coldest summer in memory ... Excuse me just a moment while I throw some more wood on the fire ... are breathing a sigh of relief. Some of us had believed that the End was not Near. But when we heard that July, 2009 "was the the hottest since record-keeping began in 1880," we thought, wait a minute, if this is hot, we're in big trouble.

Recently, ... Wait, I'll be right back. I've got to unfreeze the dog ... Okay. Back now ... the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Bet you didn't know the oceans and atmosphere are now under federal control. But, hey, this is the Obama administration) reported:

The planet’s ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for July, breaking the previous high mark established in 1998 according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. The combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for July 2009 ranked fifth-warmest since world-wide records began in 1880.

The report made its way into the Associated Press, which dutifully reported that the End is Near because of global warming.

Only one problem, says climatologist and former NASA scientist Roy Spencer, the NOAA's study "has a spurious warming since 1998 of about 0.2 deg. C, most of which occurred as a jump in 2001." In other words, the July, 2009 ocean temperatures are overstated in the report:

... I have no idea how such a large warm bias could have entered into the ERSST dataset, but I’d say the evidence is pretty clear that one exists.

Finally, the 0.15 to 0.20 deg. C warm bias in the NOAA SST product makes it virtually certain that July 2009 was not, as NOAA reported, a record high for global sea surface temperatures.

So now those of us here in the heartland ... Excuse me once again as I rub my hands together to keep the blood flowing ... are thinking that maybe we're not going to have to build igloos and chew whale fat.

And so now I am trying to find the AP story on the warm bias in the NOAA report. Maybe I already burned it.

We're all going to die! We're all going to die! Nevermind.

If you were worried you were going to get hit by flying ice shards as glaciers collapsed in Greenland and Antartica because the Earth's thermostat has been set on "Hi" and we're all going to die because global warming is going to kill us all, there is good news: Glaciers don't collapse.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Hubris, Thy Name is "Pitino"

First, The Basketball Coach That James Ramsey Won't Fire had his way with Karen Sypher. Then he had his way with James Ramsey. Now he wants to have his way with the media.

The Basketball Coach That James Ramsey Won't Fire is not only not contrite: he's giving lectures to the media on how to behave. He doesn't like the fact that the media is reporting on the prosecution of Karen Sypher. This is the same media that held the taped phone message for weeks until it publicly came out that The Basketball Coach Who James Ramsey Won't Fire had had an illicit relationship with Sypher.

You'd think he'd be appreciative.

One of the things he claimed to upset about was that his story was being broadcast on the day that everyone should have been honoring Ted Kennedy on his death. Wait a minute. Why is The Basketball Coach That James Ramsey Won't Fire mad at the media for this? Why shouldn't the rest of us be mad at him for it? Here are a whole bunch of people who would probably much rather be hearing about Kennedy's life, and instead they're having to endure watching Karen Sypher wax incomprehensible. Again.

He's the one who brought all this on himself. And guess what? If he had done the honorable thing and quit, we wouldn't all be plagued with it all right now.

He charged that television stations who played the tapes of Sypher speaking with the FBI were broadcasting "lies." This is the man whose attorney is claiming he paid Sypher $3,000 for "health insurance." Sypher should have remained quiet: Pitino appears to be the only philanderer who provides his bimbos with benefits.

The Basketball Coach That James Ramsey Won't Fire really seems to think he is too good for all this. And why not, with enablers like Ramsey giving him the impression that he's got carte blanche to do whatever he wants without actually being held accountable in any real way to his university?

His impromptu press conference seems to have caught everyone off guard, and it can't have come as good news over at the Scandal War Room over at U of L, which must now have to operate 24/7, and where Ramsey has probably now added staff who specialize in bimbo eruptions.

Now Rick is all over the news again, and the chief subject of talk show discussions.

Could it be that Ramsey is now thinking that maybe he should have cut Rick loose after all?

Another report from one of our playgrounds of political correctness (a.k.a. our colleges and universities)

Mary Grabar describes her experience as an adjunct English professor trying to teach, like, English--which is now apparently declasse in our higher re-education camps:

I’m an adjunct English professor. When the subject of adjunct faculty comes up, the predictable calls for unionization and “social justice” are often voiced by my tenured colleagues enjoying light teaching loads and by administrators enjoying comfortable salaries overseeing “multicultural” programs. But I know that I would not be among their intended beneficiaries were they made aware of my political views.

It’s not that I sought to be political when I returned to school in the 1990s to earn my Ph.D. I soon discovered, however, that political neutrality—even in literary studies—is suspect. In the academic world, the belief that great literature conveys universal, timeless themes is generally taken as evidence of an imperialistic outlook. The same holds for history, where the reliance on factual evidence and focus on major events are deemed offensive to women and those from non-Western cultures.

My fellow graduate students tailored their programs for the job market: studying African-American and gay writers, and applying the trendy postmodern, deconstructivist literary theories. Since 2002, when I earned my Ph.D. in English, the field has gotten even stranger, with such additions to the ideological postcolonial, African-American, and critical theory courses as “fat studies” and “trauma studies.” An upperclassman can enroll in “Introduction to Visual Rhetoric”—and then presumably in “Advanced Visual Rhetoric.” But how does my study of Plato and Cicero prepare me to teach these classes? ...

Read the rest here.

Gambling industry wins Senate seat, loses the vote

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 26, 2009

Contact: Martin Cothran
Phone: (859) 329-1919

LEXINGTON, KY— An anti-slots group pointed out last night that although State Rep. Robin Webb won a special election in the 18th Senate District to fill the vacated seat of Charlie Borders, the total anti-casino vote was higher than the pro-casino vote. "The anti-expanded gambling vote in this race was split," said Martin Cothran, spokesman for Say No To Casinos, who pointed to the fact that the third candidate in the race, a Democrat who switched party registration at the last minute, was also against slots at tracks.

"If you add up the numbers, the tracks lost,” Cothran said. “The gambling industry picked up the seat, but lost the vote.

"The gambling industry went 'all-in' in this race. It dumped in a load of cash. They had a money advantage, an experienced, better-known candidate, a huge voter registration advantage, and split opposition. And then they won by only 282 votes. The champagne was certainly flowing last night, but when the political reality sets in, they'll need a good hangover remedy."

The vote total of the two anti-gambling candidates, Dr. Jack Ditty (Republican) and Guy E. Gibbons, Jr. (Independent) was 9355, with Webb’s total only 8684.

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How stupid do they think we are?

Rich Lowry at National Review on what we're supposed to assume to support Obamacare:

The Obama team is saddled with a foundering health-care strategy. But it has a fallback plan -- relying on the sheer dimwitted gullibility of the American public. How stupid do they think we are?

Stupid enough to think that a new $1 trillion health-care entitlement is just the thing to restore the country to fiscal health.

Stupid enough not to know that almost every entitlement known to man has cost more than originally estimated, with a congressional committee in 1967 underestimating by a factor of ten Medicare’s cost by 1990.

... Stupid enough not to focus on how the gap between the House plan’s revenue and spending steadily grows after the first ten years, making it a long-term budget buster.

Stupid enough to think increased preventive care will save the government money, just because Pres. Barack Obama constantly repeats it, despite all the independent studies to the contrary ...

Read the rest here.

University of Kentucky scores a "C" on its core curriculum in national report

For Immediate Release
August 22, 2009

The University of Kentucky received a grade of "C" from a national organization that monitors what colleges and universities teach. In its report, "What Will They Learn?" the American Council of Trustees and Alumni gave it a mediocre rating on its general education requirements, and specifically criticized its natural science requirement because it could be met my taking courses which didn't teach natural or physical sciences.

"That a school attempting to be a 'Top Twenty Research School' would have a weak general education requirement in science is pretty pitiful," said Martin Cothran, senior policy analyst with The Family Foundation of Kentucky.

"No credit given for Natural or Physical Science," said the report of UK, "because the Natural Sciences requirement may be satisfied by courses from anthropology, political science, and psychology; and the College Laboratory or Field Work Experience requirement includes courses from the social sciences."

While crediting UK for its requirements in composition, language, and math, the report docked the state's flagship educational institution for weak requirements in literature, U. S. government/history, economics, and science.

The report evaluated whether 100 major institutions require seven key subjects. "What we found is alarming," said the report's authors. "Even as our students need broad-based skills and
knowledge to succeed in the global marketplace, our colleges and universities are failing to deliver."

The report comes during the same month that UK earned a lower ranking in the U. S. News and World Report national university rankings for the third straight year, falling from 112 in 2007, to 122nd in 2008, to 128th in 2009.

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Thomas Sowell on Obama's America

Thomas Sowell sums it up pretty nicely:

The serious, and sometimes chilling, provisions of the medical-care legislation that President Obama has been trying to rush through Congress are important enough for all of us to stop and think, even though his political strategy from the outset has been to prevent us from having time to stop and think about it.

What we also should stop to think about is the mindset behind this legislation, which is very consistent with the mindset behind other policies of this administration, whether the particular issue is bailing out General Motors, telling banks whom to lend to, or appointing “czars” to tell all sorts of people in many walks of life what they can and cannot do.

The idea that government officials can play God from Washington is not a new idea, but it is an idea that is being pushed with new audacity ...

Read the rest here.

Hoping the Woodstock reminiscing will now just f-f-fade away

Well I hate to put the least great generation d-down, but I am now officially sick of Woodstock reminiscences. I now like Woodstock--or, rather, the idea of Woodstock--less than I did before, which was not at all.

Woodstock was a 3-day long gathering of slightly overgrown, spoiled adolescents who were members of the first g-g-generation of Americans to be excessively coddled by their parents, given too much money and comfort, and who, in what was undoubtedly one of their many attempts to escape responsibility, ran away from home for three days and then tried to justify their self indulgence by spouting platitudes about peace and love that were as sanctimonious as they were lacking in any real meaning.

In fact, I hold Dr. Spock personally responsible for the entire spectacle.

These people--as well as the rest of us--would have been better off back at home doing their chores, working hard, and being generally productive members of society.

And one of the worst things about it is that every ten years these now extremely overgrown adolescents, many of whom weren't even there (but somehow think they were), make a big s-s-sensation about it, and have somehow succeeded in convincing the most recent generation that it was some kind of great contribution to, ... well, something.

It's not quite clear.

Well, it's my generation too. And most of us not only weren't there, but don't particularly wish we were. So I'll be glad when the latest round of self-indulgent reminiscing just f-f-fades way.

"Kentucky Tonight" tonight: Charter Schools

I will be on KET's "Kentucky Tonight" program tonight discussing charter schools. The show starts at 8:00 p.m.

Directive 1233 not as benign as they're saying: Charles Krauthammer on health care reform

Charles Krauthammer is a one-man truth panel:

Let’s see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.

We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I’ve got nothing against her. She’s a remarkable political talent. But there are no “death panels” in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.

We also have to tell the defenders of the notorious Section 1233 of H.R. 3200 that it is not quite as benign as they pretend ...

Read more here.