“Sanctuary City” = No Federal Funds

Or why the US Senators who think it is a good idea to try to roll the American voters with a critically flawed "reform" package are suffering from severe, collective case of rectal-cranial inversion. Representative Tom Tancredo managed to win a spectacular vote in the House today, inserting an amendment into a funding bill that will cut off all Federal emergency services money from a city that declares itself a "sanctuary" for illegal immigrants.

And he got 50 Democrats to support it. Read that again: 50 Democrats voted to cut off money for cities that flout Federal law.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. House of Representatives this morning voted to withhold federal emergency services funding for "sanctuary cities" that protect illegal immigrants.

Anti-illegal immigration champion Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., sponsored the measure, which he says would apply to cities such as Denver and Boulder. He was elated by its passage, which stunned critics and supporters alike.

The Littleton Republican's amendment to the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill appears to have no language specifically defining a sanctuary city. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper has long disputed giving the city that label.

"The issue has come to fruition," Tancredo said by cell phone after the vote. "The people of the country really have spoken. It's a really good indicator of just how much closer to the people the House is than the Senate is."

The House passed the amendment, 234 to 189, with 50 Democrats voting in favor.

Tancredo and his staffers hooted and cheered from his office across the street from the Capitol immediately after the vote.

Tancredo has introduced similar amendments at least seven other times since 2004, but each has failed — often by wide margins.

That should be a strong signal for the Senate that they are in serious trouble if they try to ram this down the voter's throats. This is a bad bill that the people do not want - and the House is not likely to pass it, given these results. So the Senators - and the White House - are damaging themselves for no good reason at all.

Boston Globe: Right As Always

Jammie Wearing Fool caught the amazing perfection of the Boston Globe (aka New York Times bush league) in a blatant media tapdance proving they are always right on every issue - even if they have to do a 180 to prove it. If history proves they were wrong, they'll spin around and proclaim, in their very best pontifical, hectoring voice, that they were right all along. By proclaiming the opposite.

In 2005 when Sharon announced he planned to withdraw from Gaza, the Boston Globe went after Benjamin Netanyahu for arguing Gaza would be ''a giant base for terrorism".

Flash forward to 2007, after Hamas takes over power in Gaza, the Globe declares the "Ariel Sharon foolishly unilateral withdrawal in 2005"…

Must suck always being right…

JWF has the money quotes from both. It is getting harder and harder to hide this kind of reversal in the age of the internet (thanks, Algore!), Google Cache and Lexis-Nexis, isn't it?

Bad News For Tulsa

It appears that the 1957 Plymouth Belvedere buried in Tulsa for the past 50 years is in very bad shape due to ground water infiltrating the concrete vault it was housed in. The car is essentially a rusty basket case. Kind of a sad end for "Miss Belvedere".

TULSA, Okla. - A concrete vault encasing a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere buried a half-century ago may have been built to withstand a nuclear attack but it couldn't beat back the natural onslaught of moisture.

At a Friday ceremony complete with a couple of drum rolls, crews removed a multilayered protective wrapping caked with red mud, revealing a vintage vehicle that was covered in rust and wouldn't crank.

There were a few bright spots, literally: shiny chrome was still visible around the doors and front fender, and workers were able to put air in the tires.

But the unveiling in front of thousands of people at the Tulsa Convention Center confirmed fears that the past 50 years had not been the kindest to Miss Belvedere.

"I'll tell you what, she's a mess. Look at her," said legendary hot rod builder Boyd Coddington, who was unable to start the thing up as planned.

Event organizer Sharon King Davis, a fourth generation Tulsan whose grandfather helped bury the Plymouth, joked that the car needed a little Oil of Olay to help it out.

In the trunk, organizers meticulously pulled out some of the objects buried with the two-door hardtop to celebrate Oklahoma's 50 years of statehood — a 5-gallon can of leaded gasoline, which went for 24 cents a gallon in those days, and rusted cans of Schlitz beer.

The contents of a "typical" woman's handbag, including 14 bobby pins, lipstick and a bottle of tranquilizers, were supposed to be in the glove box, but all that was found looked like a lump of rotted leather.

Workers also searched for a spool of microfilm that recorded the entries of a contest to determine who would win the car: the person who guessed the closest of what Tulsa's population would be in 2007 — 382,457 — would win.

That person, or his or her heirs, will get the car by June 22, along with a $100 savings account, worth about $1,200 today with interest. So far, all they found were guesses of the population written on postcards.

The elements could not penetrate a separate time capsule buried with the car. Its top was sawed off Friday and organizers removed and unfolded an unfaded American flag, sending up a rousing cheer through the crowd.

Other historical documents, aerial maps of the city and postcards were in good condition.

Kind of a pity. Frankly, the AP pictures that are out now showing the car makes it appear to be not even worth thinking about restoring. In fact, I'm not sure the winner would even claim it.

The Hits Just Keep On Coming

The Daily Mail is reporting that Britain's carbon trading scheme, enacted just a few years ago, has lined the pockets of power generation companies there to the tune of about £2 billion. And hasn't cut emissions.

Energy companies have made up to £2billion profit at the expense of customers under the EU’s controversial carbon trading scheme, the Government has conceded.

The scheme – introduced two and a half years ago – was supposed to encourage dirty power stations to switch to cleaner, low carbon, energy.

But, in practice, the first phase of the scheme has allowed some of the dirtiest polluters to generate huge profits by ramping up customer bills, without lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

Some industry experts believe the carbon trading ‘windfall’ will soar to around £1.5billion a year when the second phase begins next year.

Consumer and environmental groups yesterday said the scheme had lined the pockets of electricity generators such as PowerGen and Scottish Power without reducing emissions.

European carbon trading is a key part of the Government’s drive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Under the scheme, major manufacturers and electricity producers are handed permits that allow them to produce a fixed amount of carbon dioxide each year.

Companies that reduce their pollution ration can sell unused permits on the open market, while companies that exceed their carbon target must buy additional permits.

It was assumed that companies would be forced to buy the permits, giving them a real financial incentive to reduce pollution. But, after lobbying from industry, the EU handed out the permits for free.

Because power firms were now keen to reduce pollution by cutting their total electricity output, the knock-on effect was to increase the price of electricity, generating massive windfall profits.

In addition, they were able to sell any unused permits for a profit on the open market.

Meet the new boss, makes the old boss look like a piker. Seriously, this is just one more example of the raging fraud that is being pushed by true believers. (There are multiple links to other stories here at this post.) As more and more of this is revealed, it is seriously time to take a hard look at where the money is going. Because someone is getting very rich off this scam. Follow the money; the old rule applies.

Poland Standing Firm

You know, I really like the Poles for a number of reasons. Their country has had a very troubled history due to a spectacular lack of natural defenses making it a playground for the Germans and the Russians through the centuries. But they always managed to keep their national identity, no matter who happened to be occupying them at the moment. And their example of throwing off the Soviet yoke inspired the collapse of the Eastern bloc. (They have, of course, done some rather bad things through the years there as well, nobody is perfect.) Now Poland is standing firm against a push by the European Union - led by Germany - to force a new "governing treaty" to replace the failed EU constitution. And they are making Germany sweat right now.

WARSAW (AFP) - Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski on Friday ruled out any "horsetrading" as Warsaw continued to threaten to sink efforts to draft a new governing treaty for the 27-nation European Union.

"Starting horsetrading of any kind, outside of the framework of the constitution, is bad form," Kaczynski said when asked by reporters whether Warsaw would give ground on its demands for reformed EU voting rules, in exchange for boosted funding from Brussels.

"No one in these negotiations has proposed anything, at least in an official way," said Kaczynski, speaking after talks with his Spanish counterpart Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

Since last month, more than a dozen European leaders have visited Poland to try to convince the prime minister and his twin, President Lech Kaczynski, not to block a new treaty.

Earlier in Berlin Zapatero had said his country was prepared to compromise to find an institutional treaty for the European Union but expected Poland to do the same.

"Spain is ready to have a more flexible position so that we can make progress," Zapatero said after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of next week's EU summit in Brussels.

Zapatero warned that isolation was not an option for Poland, which is bitterly opposed to proposed changes to the voting mechanism for the 27-country bloc.

He was the first of a host of EU leaders to hold discussions with Merkel over a three-day period as Germany — which currently holds the EU presidency — seeks to remove obstacles to its goal of putting the bloc on the road towards a new treaty to replace the rejected draft constitution.

Merkel wants to reach agreement at the summit on a new treaty that would come into force by 2009 at the latest.

Later Friday, the chancellor was to see Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, whose country helped to wreck the draft constitution when voters rejected it in a referendum in 2005 shortly after the French did the same.

Yet the German chancellor's toughest task was likely to come Saturday when she faces Polish President Lech Kaczynski at a castle outside Berlin.

Warsaw wants the number of votes a country wields in decisions affecting the entire bloc to be calculated based on the square root of the country's population.

The double majority method that current EU president Germany wants in the new treaty would give too much weight in crucial votes to large countries, Poland has argued.

Now this is an interesting concept, using the square root of the population. It is actually able to level a lot of the unfairness of an overwhelming difference in population. If the old slide rule is accurate, a population of 50 million yields a square root around 7,000. Plugging 10 million in yields right around 3,100. It would be very difficult for Germany and France to run roughshod over the smaller countries, wouldn't it?  

Backlash Against Mindless Stupidity

It would appear that more states are recognizing that giving school officials unlimited authority to enact draconian - and stupid - "zero-tolerance" policies is a spectacularly bad idea. And they are beginning to step in and stop some of the insanity.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Fifth-graders in California who adorned their mortarboards with tiny toy plastic soldiers this week to support troops in Iraq were forced to cut off their miniature weapons. A Utah boy was suspended for giving his cousin a cold pill prescribed to both students. In Rhode Island, a kindergartner was suspended for bringing a plastic knife to school so he could cut cookies.

It's all part of "zero tolerance" rules, which typically mandate severe punishments for weapons and drug offenses regardless of the circumstances.

Lawmakers in several states say the strict policies in schools have resulted in many punishments that lack common sense, and are seeking to loosen the restrictions.

"A machete is not the same as a butter knife. A water gun is not the same as a gun loaded with bullets," said Rhode Island state Sen. Daniel Issa, a former school board member who worries that no-tolerance rules are applied blindly and too rigidly.

Issa sponsored a bill requiring school districts to decide punishments for alcohol, drug and non-firearm weapon violations on a case-by-case basis after weighing the circumstances. It passed the Senate and House and now heads for the governor's desk.

Some have long been aware of the problems of zero tolerance. For the last decade, Mississippi has allowed local school districts to reduce previously mandatory one-year expulsions for violence, weapons and drug offenses.

More recently, Texas lawmakers have also moved to tone down their state's zero-tolerance rules. Utah altered its zero-tolerance policy on drugs so asthmatic students can carry inhalers. The American Bar Association has recommended ending zero-tolerance policies, while the American Psychological Association wants the most draconian codes changed.

Stories about the more extreme school system lunacy pop up all the time. It's past due to stop the mindless enforcement of standards with no thought involved. (Even though that is what school officials are generally best at. Mark Twain said it best: "God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.")

Two Space Station Computers Back On Line

Two out of three of the computers that control the International Space Station's orientation are back on line after Russian cosmonauts managed to re-route power to them.

The progress came after days of frustrating effort and, for the time being, removed a set of troubling options lying ahead for NASA and the Russian space agency if the computers continued to fail.

"They're up and operational and this is good news for all," said Lynette Madison, a NASA spokeswoman in Houston.

Cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov pulled off the feat by bypassing a power switch with a cable to get two out of three computer connections running. They planned to watch the computers for the next several hours to make sure they were functioning properly.

Had the machines continued to malfunction, the three-member space station crew could still have remained on board, but other steps would have been taken to maintain the power and oxygen supplies. Russia had already begun to move up plans for a cargo ship to deliver supplies, including new computers, next month.

And ominous questions were raised about the possibility of eventually needing to bail out of the space station — something a top NASA official rejected earlier in the say.

Maintaining the correct position in orbit is key for the space station. It must point its solar arrays at the sun for power and be able to shift orientation to avoid occasional large debris that comes flying through space.

The computer crash came as astronauts from space shuttle Atlantis were resuming work on the long-running construction of the station. Atlantis' seven astronauts arrived last weekend, NASA's first visit to the space station this year.

American astronauts have also repaired the damaged thermal blanket on space shuttle Atlantis using a medical stapler of all things. (Which is a pretty good idea when you think about it. How else would they do it?)

And In Today’s Real Shocking News

Hamas lied. New Associated Press headline - after their earlier one touting the promise by Hamas of amnesty for captured Fatah leaders:

Hamas gives amnesty, killings persist

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas both mocked and reached out to its defeated Fatah rivals on its first day in full control of Gaza, offering them amnesty Friday but also rifling through President Mahmoud Abbas' bedroom, stripping a former Gaza strongman's home down to the flowerpots and throwing a Fatah gunman off a rooftop…….

……Gaza City's Shifa Hospital was still grappling with the aftermath of battle. More than 90 people were killed in five days of fighting, and dozens wounded. The morgue was overflowing, with four bodies lined up on the floor, and some of the wounded were sleeping on cardboard on the floor.

Two men were killed in revenge slayings, including a Fatah gunman thrown from a roof in what Hamas described as a family grievance — the gunman, they said, had killed a member of a Hamas-allied family. Another Fatah loyalist was shot dead in southern Gaza.

So much for that. Fatah people do not believe Hamas, either and refused to give their names to reporters for fear of reprisal.

The Belvedere Has Landed

Or been pulled out of the ground, as the case may be. A 1957 Plymouth Belvedere buried in 1957 in Tulsa, Oklahoma has been pulled from the vault it was buried in 50 years ago. It is not known what condition the car is in yet. Several feet of water had to be pumped out of the vault.

The wrapped car — a gold and white two-door hardtop — appeared brown and red as it came out of the hole, but it was unclear whether the color represented dirt or rust. A bit of shiny chrome was visible on the bumper.

The car spent the last half-century covered in three layers of protective material and encased in a 12-by-20-foot concrete vault, supposedly tough enough to withstand a nuclear attack.

But event officials already had to pump out several feet of water from its crypt.

The car was placed on a flatbed truck so it could be unwrapped, spruced up and officially unveiled Friday evening at the Tulsa Convention Center. Spectators packed the streets to glimpse its journey.

Whether the car will start was unknown. Those who gathered to watch it being pulled out of the ground did not seem to care.

"I just need to see it," said Marc Montague of Auckland, New Zealand, among the couple hundred spectators amassed at the downtown site Thursday afternoon. "I've been waiting 15 years for this."

It will be interesting to see who wins it - and whether it is actually worth winning, of course. (Earlier post here, includes links.)

Nifong Says He Will Resign

Mike Nifong has announced that he will resign as district attorney. It would appear that things are not going well for him at his ethics trial.

RALEIGH, N.C. - Facing the loss of his law license, a tearful Mike Nifong said Friday he will resign as district attorney, more than a year after he obtained rape indictments against three Duke University lacrosse players who were later declared innocent by state prosecutors.

"My community has suffered enough," Nifong said from the witness stand at his ethics trial.

Next up: Nifong, the civil suits.

Scram!

Australian and American scientists have successfully flown a scramjet engine at Mach 10, or ten times the speed of sound. The flight took place in the Australian outback - or, more precisely, a long way above the outback. (A scramjet is a ramjet where supersonic combustion occurs, producing extremely high efficiencies.)

The experimental scramjet engine is an air-breathing supersonic combustion engine being developed by Australian and U.S. defense scientists that researchers hope will lead to super-high speed flight.

Scientists from Australia's defense Science and Technology Organization and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), used a conventional rocket to launch the scramjet high above the Woomera test site.

The engine was then tested as it reached speeds of Mach 10.

Scramjets need a rocket to propel the vehicle to high-speed before the engine can take over. They also need to operate in the thin atmosphere far above the altitude of commercial airliners.

"All the indications are it was a success, and we have some very happy scientists," an Australian defense spokesman told Reuters on Friday.

This would appear to be a further development of the HyShot program from the University of Queensland that I posted about last year. This article does not indicate whether that project is still involved in this, although I'd be surprised if some of those scientists are not still on board. If they can get the engine up to Mach 24, they can theoretically use it to reach orbit.

Space Station Computers Still Down

The computers that control thrusters that keep the International Space Station in proper orientation are still not repaired as of this morning. Russian cosmonauts worked through the night but were only able to get one of three power feeds operational.

The Russians worked on the system through the night but only succeeded in getting one of three power channels to the station's computers operating before flight controllers told them to get some sleep, NASA flight director Holly Ridings said.

Valery Lyndin, spokesman for Russia's Mission Control outside Moscow, said Friday that support staff on the ground had so far been unable to pinpoint the source of the computer failure.

"The lives of the crew are not in danger," Lyndin stressed.

He said there were no plans to evacuate the space station. A NASA official also said the chance of abandoning the space station was remote.

The station's oxygen-regeneration and all basic life-support systems are functioning properly, but the orientation system was affected by the computer problems, Lyndin said.

The troubled computers, in the Russian segment, control thrusters that are fired to orient the station and its solar panels toward the sun for maximum energy production. Gyroscopes on the station's American segments are functioning, and the station is in a more-or-less proper position, he said.

"We've had computer failures before, and we have coped with the problem, but now the situation is much more complicated," cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov said on NTV television. "We have the shuttle docked to the station, and active work is going on at the station — the Americans' space walk. We must maintain the station's orientation."

The focus now appears to be on possible bad connections in the station power supplies.

"A power line has a certain magnetic field around it, and that can affect systems near it," said Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager. "This is the leading theory today."

The new solar arrays were connected by the Atlantis crew Monday. If the power feed from those arrays turns out to be the problem, the Russian section can still get power from other solar arrays.

Yesterday I mentioned the weird occurrence of a baby monitor in a Chicago suburb that is picking up NASA videos. I said then that NASA was too quick to dismiss that as not coming from the station. Because RF and EMF fields can do very weird things to electronics. Back when I was working at the first nuclear station I was at, there was a series of failures in the security computers. After beating their collectives heads against the walls for quite a while, the engineers trying to fix the problems finally traced it down. An improperly grounded twisted pair of wires was acting as an antenna inside one of the MUX boxes. It was blasting RF into the MUX and causing a whole bunch of weird stuff to happen in there. Once they fixed the connection, all the problems went away. I was not one of the people working on it, so that is as much as I know about that incident. But I remembered that when I had to update the meteorology tower - and my wiring had to go through those same MUX boxes. My connections were triple checked.

Laying Down Smoke

For whatever reason, the media continues to carry water for the Palestinian terror group Hamas, even though they just forcibly took over Gaza by force. The AP is shopping their story and the Washington Post dutifully picks it up and touts it.

JERUSALEM, June 15 — Victorious Hamas gunmen rounded up senior military leaders of the Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip early Friday, then announced a general amnesty in a sign the Islamic movement is seeking to reconcile with its secular rivals after five days of fierce fighting.

The announcement defused worries that Hamas, which completed its swift military seizure of Gaza hours earlier, would begin dispensing victor's justice in the strip. In announcing the arrest of the commanders of the vanquished Fatah-controlled security services, Hamas officials called them "collaborators," a label indicating they work on behalf of Israel and can often mean a death sentence in the Palestinian territories.

But a few hours later, as Gaza residents emerged from their homes to walk in streets quiet for the first time in days, Hamas officials said the commanders, including the head of the Fatah-controlled Presidential Guard and the Palestinian National Forces, would not be harmed.

Per the AP story, the "amnesty" specifically applies to Fatah "leaders":

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - On its first day of full rule in Gaza, the Islamic militant Hamas on Friday granted amnesty to Fatah leaders, signaling that it seeks conciliation with the defeated forces of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The WaPo appears to have obscured that little tidbit. They also appear not to look beyond that little Hamas drama at what else Hamas is saying: That there will be no negotiation with Fatah except by way of force:

“There will be no dialogue with Fatah, only the sword and the rifle,” declared Nezar Rayyan, a top Hamas leader, on the Islamist movement’s radio station as Fatah broadcasters were bombed off the air.

Yep. That's some seeking of reconciliation. It also completely ignores other reports of Palestinian flying lessons:

Obeideh said Hamas would "offer amnesty" to all those who are with different opinions. "Our battle is not with Fatah… but with the group that tried to implement an external agenda," he said. "We protect our people's right, everywhere and anyone… regardless of their affiliation to move freely."

However, Hamas also said that a Fatah supporter was thrown to his death by the family of a man he was accused of having killed earlier.

Elsewhere, a senior Fatah official committed suicide after learning he was on Hamas's wanted list, Fatah said.

That last bit should tell you what Fatah members think of Hamas' promises of amnesty. Which are of the same believability as all of their "ceasefires". Yet the media chugs merrily along, regurgitating Hamas press releases.

Have Fun, Kids

Martin Indyk, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, writes in the Washington Post today about the situation in Gaza. He is wondering if maybe the fix was in for this "Palestinian two-state solution" all along. Did Mahmoud Abbas purposely throw the game just to let Hamas fail on its own in Gaza?

One might expect that this democratically elected leader would denounce Hamas's coup and call for international intervention to restore his control. But there he sat in Ramallah, prevaricating as the only liberated part of his putative state fell into the hands of his Palestinian archenemies. Finally yesterday, he dismissed the Hamas-led government, but only after its takeover of Gaza was complete.

Critics will say that this is typical of Abbas, a weak leader who would rather appease his challengers than confront them. But perhaps Abbas understands the emerging realities better than they do.

Over the past year when Hamas would stage attacks in Gaza, Fatah forces would retaliate in the West Bank, where they were stronger. When fighting began this time, Fatah did little in the West Bank to counter Hamas's onslaught. Abbas's passivity further confirms that the fix was in. Abbas and Fatah have in effect conceded Gaza to Hamas while they hold on to the West Bank. Hamastan and Fatahstine: a "two-state solution" — just not the one that George W. Bush had in mind.

Of course, all Palestinian leaders will continue to declare the indivisibility of the Palestinian homeland. But in private, Abbas and other Fatah leaders may take solace from the dilemma Hamas will now have to confront.

The failed state of Gaza that Hamas controls is wedged between Egypt and Israel. Its water, electricity and basic goods are imported from the Jewish state, whose destruction Hamas has declared as its fundamental objective. One more Qassam rocket fired from Gaza into an Israeli village and Israel could threaten to seal the border if Hamas did not stop its attacks. Hamas would then have to reach a meaningful cease-fire with Israel or seek Egypt's help meeting the basic needs of the 1.5 million Gazans. Hosni Mubarak's regime turned a blind eye to the importation of weapons and money that helped ensure Hamas's takeover. But would Egypt allow on its border a failed terrorist state run by an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood with links to Iran and Hezbollah? Or will it insist on the maintenance of certain standards of order in return for its cooperation?

Was this the goal all along? Let Hamas try to run things and watch the collapse? If Israel cuts off the power, will Egypt step up? Obviously, Hamas got its weapons by smuggling them through Egypt. So now Egypt has a bunch of terrorist thugs for neighbors. The AP today is plastering a story on the wires that assures everyone that Hamas plans to "pardon" Fatah leaders. But the story only mentions leaders, not troops. And there are multiple reports of savage looting of captured homes of Fatah members. Gaza is going to be a very unpleasant place - much worse than it has been - with Hamas in absolute control.

Maybe that is exactly what Abbas wanted to prove.