The Associated Press reports that Michael Griffin "regrets airing his personal views about global warming during a recent radio interview."  My previous post reported his comments.

I regret that he regrets airing his comments.  I want to emphasize, though, that he did not say he has changed his views on global warming.  He only said he regrets airing those views.  Apparently he believes the politics of glowarm are such that he should have kept his personal views to himself.

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I have no sympathy for Paris Hilton's plight, but if similar offenses by tens of thousands of illegal immigrants were given the same amount of attention this country would be a lot safer.

Typically, illegals just pack up and move to another area after being arrested and charged with some offense and then released on their own recognizance or on bond. Little effort is made to locate these fugitives and bring them to justice. Is this because we don't consider their behavior to be correctable? Or that they are just not worth our effort? After all, they have already demonstrated that they have no respect for our laws simply by coming here.

I have a problem with deer eating the vegetables in my garden. Knowing that I'm not going to be able to change the innate foraging nature of the deer there are at least two things I can do to ensure that I will be able to harvest enough vegetables for my household. One is to build a deer-proof fence around my garden. The other is to grow enough vegetables for my household and the deer. I have found the latter to be the most practical.

In other words I have decided to just accept the cost of the foraging deer rather than try to change their nature. That's because I know they are just animals. Are we demeaning the illegal immigrants by not holding them accountable for their actions? Are we treating them like they are less than human?

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Apparently the politicians in Washington think that we are all complete idiots or that we are just not paying attention. (Actually, they might be right, to some extent, on the latter). The Bush-Kennedy-Kyl Immigration Bill is an outright sham.

The proponents of the bill would have us believe that we need new laws in order to deal with the illegal immigration problem. This is clearly not true. Obviously we already have laws governing immigration or the immigrants we're trying to deal with wouldn't be 'illegal.' If the government had been enforcing existing laws there wouldn't be an immigration problem today. The government hasn't enforced existing laws, so why should we believe they will enforce new laws?

The proponents claim that it is impossible to round up and deport all the illegal immigrants. They seem to want us to believe that if they can't deport them all there is no need to try to deport any of them. What if they felt the same way about capturing and punishing murderers?

They want us to believe that while it is impossible to round up and deport all the illegals it is possible to round up and guide all of them through a process that will give them citizenship, even though this process requires that they all go back to their home country for a period of time. So sending them home is both impossible and possible?

They claim that the illegals will voluntarily come forward to enter the citizenship process. But why would they? The process requires that they pay a fine, learn English, start paying taxes, and go back to their home country for a period of time. If they don't come forward they can stay here indefinitely without having to do any of these things because ... it's impossible to round up and deport them.

They claim that the bill does not grant amnesty to the illegals because it has conditions and imposes a penalty. The only valid argument that the bill doesn't reward the illegals for ignoring our immigration laws is that the bill's citizenship process will be unattractive to the illegals and, therefore, ineffective -- as I argued in the previous paragraph. In other words, it's not amnesty only if it doesn't work. If it is attractive to a large number of the illegals it obviously is amnesty.

The bill is a sham and it at least intends to grant amnesty to the immigration law breakers. That's why it's being called the Shamnesty Bill and that's why it should not be passed.

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A reader sent two links to articles describing the global warming skepticism of two scientists -- one in Australia and one in the United States. The first article is written by Bob Carter, an environmental scientist at James Cook University who studies ancient climate change. He feels that heads of state are being misled by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other organizations:

It is past time for those who have deceived governments and misled the public regarding dangerous human-caused global warming to be called to account. Aided by hysterical posturing by green NGOs, their actions have led to the cornering of government on the issue and the likely implementation of futile emission policies that will impose direct extra costs on every household and enterprise in Australia to no identifiable benefit.

Carter says that "the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998."

The second article quotes Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology. Bryson considers global warming "a bunch of hooey":

The University of Wisconsin professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it.

There is no question the earth has been warming. It is coming out of the "Little Ice Age," he said in an interview this week.

"However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We've been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It's been warming up for a long time," Bryson said.

The Little Ice Age was driven by volcanic activity. That settled down so it is getting warmer, he said.

Humans are polluting the air and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but the effect is tiny, Bryson said.

"It's like there is an elephant charging in and you worry about the fact that there is a fly sitting on its head. It's just a total misplacement of emphasis," he said. "It really isn't science because there's no really good scientific evidence."

Galen McKinley, an assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UW-Madison disagrees with Bryson, but her analogies destroy her credibility:

"We understand very well the basic process of the greenhouse effect, which is that we know that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the heat trapped by the atmosphere. You put one dollar more in the bank and you have one dollar more there tomorrow. It's a very clear feedback," she said.

Well not neccesarily, not if you or someone else takes the dollar out of the bank. And I don't think she meant to reveal to us that putting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is like money in the bank for her.

"If you saw smoke in your house, it would be irresponsible not to get your family out, right?"

Well no, not if you know the source of the smoke and know that it doesn't present an imminent danger to your family.

I predict that we will soon see a lot more articles on glowarm skepicism.  The media will soon become bored with shilling for the global warming alarmists and start seeing more interesting news in what the skeptics have to say.  When everyone is saying the same thing it is hardly news.  And scams don't usually hold together for very long.

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John Lott, writing on FoxNews.com, reports that studies are showing that the death penalty is discouraging crime. I think that should be quite obvious. No executed person has ever committed another crime. At least not in this world.

Seriouly though, the one strong reservation that I have about the death penalty is due to the possibility that an innocent person might be executed. Considering the number of imprisoned people being released these days because modern forensics is proving them to be innocent of the crimes they were charged with, executing an innocent person is a very real possibility.

I don't have much confidence that judges, juries and prosecutors will always reach the right verdict. I strongly believe that no person convicted of a capital crime based solely on circumstantial evidence should be sentenced to die.

Related post: Mike Nifong and the Justice System

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It was last seen heading east. Officials can't say at this time that foul play is involved. There are reports though of glowarm alarmists being seen in the area.

Seriously, the Associated Press reports that "a five-acre glacial lake in Chile's southern Andes has disappeared -- and scientists want to know why."

Why? What's the big deal about a five-acre lake? That's just twice the size of my yard. Here in Florida it's relatively common for much larger lakes to drain into the ground. Most of them refill within months or a few years. One lake in northern Florida has gone through this cycle many times. I don't remember any of these instances becoming international news.

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Some of the political commentators think that Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York City, is posturing to run for president as an Independent. I don't care if the guy is a billionaire, to me his politics are dopey. He says that he will fix our broken political system by transcending partisan differences. Now how the heck is he going to do that? Wave a magic wand and cause members of Congress not to stand up for their beliefs -- which are mostly whatever they think it takes to get re-elected? And what makes him think we want the broken political system fixed? As long as it's broken maybe they won't be able to pass any dumb laws -- like the immigration and energy bills they're working on now.

Politicians like to talk about transcending partisan differences and uniting the country. They seem to think that everyone believes this would be a good thing. I say it's a good thing only if everyone else comes around to my way of thinking. I think a lot of other people will feel the same way. And a lot of them won't agree with me and others that think like me. That's why the country is divided.

The phrase 'partisan differences' seems redundant to me. If partisans have no differences they aren't really partisans are they? They would be on the same side -- unless they're dopey like Bloomberg.

It seems that most politicians believe that a partisan is a member of an opposing political party that strongly adheres to the agenda of that party.

If Bloomberg were to become president do you suppose that he would try to outlaw the serving of foods containing trans-fats in restaurants all across the country? If I wanted to protect people from themselves I would push for a prohibition against billionaires holding public office -- and against people watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

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In a column decrying the weak work ethic of Congress, Dick Morris states that Congress took a whole day off work in January because of the championship college football game between Oklahoma State and Florida State. Apparently he only remembered that one team's name starts with an 'O' and the other is from the state of Florida.  The actual participants were Ohio State and Florida. I just hope his collection of facts on the slothfulness of Congress is more reliable than his college football facts.

I'm not as concerned as Morris about members of Congress goofing off a lot. The shorter the time they're in session the less damage they can do. And there's not much point in complaining about their pay; they control that. Just vote against the incumbents when they are up for re-election.

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The Associated Press reported last week that "Democrats celebrated a step toward reducing U.S. dependence on oil as the Senate approved a bill calling for more ethanol and the first boost in gas mileage in decades." What the Democrats are really celebrating is their move to micromanage the energy market. They would like to micromanage all the markets. That way they can get more campaign contributions from all the industries that want to play in their markets.

We don't need additional controls on the energy market, we need fewer. If the government would get out of the way private industry and a free market would eliminate any energy problems. The government is currently preventing the building of nuclear power plants, preventing the development of new domestic oil fields, and preventing the building of new oil refineries. Right here in my state Senator Mel Martinez boasts frequently about 'protecting' our gulf waters from becoming oil fields. There is no pressing need to reduce our dependence on oil in general; what we need is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

There is no real environmental gain from using ethanol instead of gasoline. The only benefit from ethanol is that it can be produced domestically and, therefore, reduces to some extent our dependence on foreign oil. We should welcome the development and production of alternative energy sources like ethanol, but leave them to the free market. If there is demand for ethanol someone will supply it. And there will be demand for it when oil prices get high enough. But ethanol is not the final answer.

The ultimate renewable energy source is the sun. When the sun stops shining we won't need any more energy. If the government wants to sponsor some far-term basic research into new sources of energy it should put its money and effort into developing revolutionary ways of capturing solar energy. I'm not talking about capturing it through the production of corn and then extracting energy from the corn. I'm talking about more direct methods like the current use of solar cells to produce electricity. There has to be some breakthrough solution out there; we just need to get enough of the right people thinking about it.

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The Senate bill calls for price gouging provisions that make it unlawful to charge an "unconscionably excessive" price for oil products, including gasoline. Are they kidding? How do they expect to measure what is unconscionably excessive? Some court will throw that out the first time it is challenged. Perhaps they know that and are just trying to make some political mileage.

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There has been a lot of talk -- most of it critical -- of Mitt Romney strapping the family dog to the top of a station wagon for a 1200 mile trip to a vacation destination. This supposedly occurred in 1983. I admit that it sounded a little bad to me too, until I learned that he didn't strap the dog to the roof like a dead deer. The dog was inside a cage with a windshield on the front. Heck, that's practically traveling first class for a dog. I've heard of people tying their dog's leash to the back bumper and hitting the road.

The dog's name was Seamus. (Coincidentally, Seamus is a name being considered for my expected new grandson. In case you're wondering, we don't strap babies to the tops of cars or let them ride in the backs of pick-ups in Florida.) Seamus crapped a lot while riding on the roof and covered the station wagon with poop. The experts say that was due to the extreme stress that Seamus was experiencing. Imagine though if they are wrong and Seamus just had diarrhea -- and he was riding inside the car.

I can understand different reactions in Massachusetts than here in Northwest Florida. After all, most of them seem to believe that people of the same sex should be able to marry (How do they decide who wears the dress?), and they keep electing Kennedy and Kerry to the Senate. Here in Florida we know that dogs like to stick their noses into the wind. (I've never observed this to cause one to poop uncontrollably.) In fact, dogs here routinely ride in the open bed of pick-up trucks and seem to love it. It's obviously not against the law here, as the MA Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals says it is there.

Perhaps Romney should have let Seamus just stand on the roof of the car instead of being caged. That might have prevented some of the stress induced pooping.

Of course PETA thinks Romney committed a capital crime. It appears that they would prefer that he had put one of the kids on the roof and let the dog ride inside the car. I wonder if that would have caused the kid to lose control of his bowels.

The MA SPCA says that it's now illegal to carry a dog in a way that endangers it. If that's true, and it's taken literally, it would seem to preclude the transportation of dogs by most any means. Dogs and humans are endangered anytime they travel. Dogs are endangered when they are walked down the street on a leash -- or allowed to run free. Don't you just love these laws that can mean whatever the 'authorities' want them to mean? Is someone somewhere thinking right now about a design for a car seat for dogs?

I don't plan to vote for Romney, but if I was considering it this "Vacation" moment wouldn't be a factor in my decision. The fact that he is a Mormon is the biggest reason I won't vote for him. I'm afraid that he will want us to don black trousers and a white shirt and then hit the streets on a bicycle to spread the message.

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