Those of us who have been skeptical of the global warming claims based on shoddy science and massaged data have been proven right in spectacular fashion. I won’t replicate all the good investigative work done by others, but the publication of climate alarmist emails and efforts to collude to hide contrary data and massage results is stunning. This has to be the biggest con in history – led by former VP and Nobel Prize winner Al (”the earth’s rocks are really hot, like millions of degrees) Gore.

For the history of this amazing,breaking news head over to WUWT.

For a listing of the most damning emails go to Andrew Bolt’s blog. A couple of examples from Bolt:

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@XXXX, mhughes@XXXX
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@XXX.osborn@XXXX

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone XXXX
School of Environmental Sciences Fax XXXX
University of East Anglia
Norwich

….

From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer

Hi all

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming ? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low.

This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)
***

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.***

…

From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?

Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!

Cheers

Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit

There has to be criminal investigations. You can find all my posts on Global Warming here.

I have been writing extensively on the curious coincidence that after the Obama administration came into office it was not long before the ongoing investigation in Major Hasan was prematurely ended (see all my previous posts here). Each day new information comes to light deepening my suspicions that the liberally ideologically driven AG Holder and President Obama recklessly shut down investigation into US citizens initiated through leads detected by the NSA and now authorized under the FISA changes President Bush implemented (and Holder and Obama opposed).

As the number of clear and disturbing dots keep becoming apparent in the reporting on this story, one has to wonder how our seasoned and dedicated investigators could have missed the warning signs. Warning signs that were even embedded in Hasan’s emails to a radical, pro-Jihad, anti-American cleric in Yemen that tipped US authorities off in the first place and activated not one but two Joint Terrorism Task Forces:

United States Army Major Nidal Hasan told a radical cleric considered by authorities to be an al Qaeda recruiter, “I can’t wait to join you” in the afterlife, according to an American official with top secret access to 18 e-mails exchanged between Hasan and the cleric, Anwar Awlaki, over a six month period between December, 2008 and June, 2009.”

…

Federal investigators have found that Hasan donated $20,000 to $30,000 a year to overseas Islamic “charities.” As an Army major, his yearly salary, including housing and food allowances, was approximately $92,000. A number of Islamic charities have been identified by U.S. authorities as conduits to terror groups.

Two FBI task forces, in Washington and San Diego, received the intercepted messages, but deemed them innocent.

Emphasis mine. Please read the entire ABC News story for how Hasan worded his desire to meet his spiritual mentor in the after life.  Previous reporting has shown the initial Task Force (now known to be in San Diego) detected Hasan in December 2008. Sometime afterword the investigation was moved to the DC Task Force, where things then went horribly wrong. The emails continued until Hasan was promoted and shipped to Ft Hood for processing to Afghanistan.

Somehow the DC task force failed to find any more dots, like the fact Hasan’s superior at Walter Reed was very concerned he annotated Hasan’s permanent record with his concerns. A record supposedly reviewed, along with the emails, by the DC Task Force. Nor did the DC task force learn that Hasan was pledging allegiance to the Koran while in uniform as late as 2007. Have are security forces become this inept in the 9 months President Obama has been in office?

Well according to this one-time-insider’s post we finally have some indication that the Hasan investigation was directed down a path that was unique and guaranteed to fail:

But the FBI decided to pass the baton to another agency.

That’s why the FBI didn’t make the final call on investigating Major Hasan. That decision was “out-sourced” to the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), a branch of the Defense Department Inspector General’s office. While counter-terrorism is one of the missions of the DCIS, the agency spends most of its time dealing with contractor fraud and illegal transfers of defense technology.

…

Lawyers might argue about jurisdictional issues (afterall, Hasan was a military officer), but if the FBI was so inclined, it could have retained authority over the case, or passed it to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (CIC). Like its counterparts in the Navy and Air Force, the CIC is charged with handling counter-terrorism cases within the ranks. But, the service says it was never contacted by the FBI regarding suspicions about Hasan, and the CIC never investigated his activities. Instead, a disinterested bureaucrat at the DCIS took a cursory look, and decided to close the case.

Again, emphasis mine. So why did this high profile threat get shunted to the wrong arm of the Army? These ‘professionals’ all know which office in each part of the government is geared up to do the job right. This is not an accidental mistake in giving the job to the wrong part of the Army. This seems to be an action taken to ensure the investigation would be shut down.

Whoever made that decision in the FBI or DoJ needs to be in front of Congress right now.

We have sadly not hit bottom on the jobs situation. This week’s jobs numbers might seem to have some green shoots to the casual (math challenged) liberal news media reporter. But the news is indeed really bad.

This week the first time jobless claims did not change – did not grow and did not shrink. Might seem like good news but the problem is it is still running at over 500,000 new claims each week (half million new people applying for unemployment benefits each week). This is were we were at last year during the initial phases of the recession. We may have stopped the drop, but it has only slowed, not turned around.

If you look at the number of people on unemployment benefits you get the full picture. If the number of unemployed was dropping each week by more than the first time applications coming in the US economy would have turned the corner. This is not the case. The traditional unemployment rolls fell by 39,000, not even 10% of the 505,000 first time applicants.

But it really is worse than that. There is another category called of unemployment called the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) pool, which has been steadily growing since the liberals in DC passed their faux stimulus bill. This metric is only reported in the weekly reports, and I have tracked it back through 2009. Here is the graph as of this week:

The EUC is the last sanctuary for the chronically unemployed. The normal unemployment benefit rolls saw 39,000 people drop off, but many of those went onto EUC. In fact, so many it is hard to believe the normal rolls could only drop by 39,000 because this week the EUC rolls expanded by a whopping 101,838!

The week after the stimulus bill was passed – in a flurry of BS promises and rushing – the EUC rolls stood at 1,468,667. Since the disastrous stimulus bill passed the EUC rolls have climbed to an astounding 3,62,2091 – over 147%!

This is the true measure of Obama’s job creating. Each week we see half million people come in for their first unemployment claim. Each week somewhere around 39,000 leave the normal unemployment rolls – with a huge number moving onto the rolls of the EUC benefits. The liberal stimulus plan has added 2,153,424 people to the EUC – which are jobs LOST. That is the bottom line for Obamanomics.

Update: Now we hear Obama’s Jobs Summit will not be about creating jobs?

President Barack Obama says creating jobs isn’t the goal of a coming White House forum on jobs and economic growth.

The president told NBC News on Wednesday that the purpose of the Dec. 3 summit is to figure out how to encourage hiring by businesses still reluctant to do so.

The level of incompetence from this administration is just stunning.

The truth sometimes takes years to come out, but the verdict (literally) is in on the Katrina disaster and one of those convicted was the US Army Corps of Engineers:

The failure of the Corps to recognize the destruction that the MRGO had caused and the potential hazard that it created is clearly negligent on the part of the Corps,” said U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. in his ruling. “Furthermore, the Corps not only knew, but admitted by 1988, that the MRGO threatened human life … and yet it did not act in time to prevent the catastrophic disaster that ensued with the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina.”

MRGO is the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet and is the part of the damn system that broke under Katrina’s rains and destroyed New Orleans. If not for that breach I would suspect New Orleans would not have been so devastated.

But more importantly is the fact the danger was identified in 1988. It seems our ‘first black’ President Clinton was negligent in addressing the problem (as were other Presidents). The truth is Clinton was as responsible as Bush was – as in not at all. It was the Corps’ responsibility to prioritize their activities and make sure this situation was addressed to save lives. Clearly they failed to do so in time to advert massive loss of life and property.

Katrina was a historic storm which wiped the Gulf Coast directly in its path bare of most human structures. There was no amount of preparing that can handle this kind of devastation  - along with state and local leaders who refuse to evacuate their people or allow recovery people into the damaged area. The severe incompetence was definitely tilted towards the Democrats in Louisiana than anywhere else.

The person leading the charge against holding 9-11 civilian trials in New York City yesterday was centrist GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He was the most articulate and the most powerful as to why the Holder decision was incoherent and dangerous. He nailed Holder by asking what would happen if Osama Bin Laden was to be captured – would he go to criminal court an gain the rights of US Citizens, or would he go to a military tribunal as all illegal combatants in war time have gone? The question left AG Holder babbling as incoherently as his liberal policies.

Senator Graham rightfully noted this would be THE FIRST TIME we ever gave one of our enemies of war the rights and privileges of a citizen in our courtrooms. All this even though none of the terrorists we picked up on the battlefield overseas were read their right to be silent, were given their right to a lawyer, were given their right to a speedy trial, were given their right to remain silent. All violations that would have the case kicked out of a normal trial.

When Graham was on Sean Hannity’s radio show he also exposed the illogic of Holder’s warped thinking. He noted that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was being given the superior world stage, along with visibility into our data and methods, from which he can put America on trial – all the time wrapped in the constitutional rights of an American. But other detainees who hit military targets, they go to the more restricted military tribunals for their day of reckoning.

Of course, all this does is incentivize terrorists to hit soft targets – if they aren’t martyred they get the stage, data and rights of America’s civilian court system over the military tribunal. With a newly minted Marine in the family I don’t want any attacks on military units of course. But at least military units are prepared and armed and typically knock the snot out of the bad guys, so if I had to pick whether it is better for terrorists to attack our military overseas or our civilians here at home it is not hard to make the choice.

Lindsey Graham did this country an amazing service yesterday as he called out the stupidity of the Holder/Obama decision to hold civilian trials in America for our enemies from 9-11 and other terrorist acts. Maybe now those myopic conservatives on the far right will wake up and realize centrist can make a huge difference – just like Lieberman, Bush and McCain did with The Surge in Iraq to win the war there.

No more talk of drumming good people out of the GOP – now is not the time.

Update: NewsBusters has the Graham-Holder confrontation video and more.

Update: Allah Pundit at Hot Air also chimes in.

Can we survive the liberal policies of Obama, Pelosi and Reid? We might just find out the hard way:

Poll: 51% of Republicans would rather risk losing elections than win with RINOs

Actually, the path forward is for the far right purists to be replaced in the GOP coalition by the centrists flooding away from the liberal Democrats. This would clobber both fringes at once. If we want to go for purity, it all depends on who gets purged – right? A purely centrist party would have two divided and impotent camps in opposition.

Bring it on.

If something interesting pops up, will post it.

10:10 AM Eastern - Leahy asks which resources are being utilized to investigate Ft Hood. Holder focused on military criminal trial, Leahy pressed him to focus on the missteps prior to the tragedy. Holder says the president has ordered such an investigation, hedges on impacting the criminal prosecution. Chairman Leahy did not sound very impressed.

10:20 AM Eastern – Senator Sessions is asking why the American people are wrong to challenge a political policy decision regarding the civil 9-11 trials. Holder is not going to win this one. He can go ahead, but it will cost Obama massive political capitol. Interesting debate, but not something I will be taking time to post on.

10:30 AM Eastern - Sen Kohl pokes holder on Ft Hood and the FBI determining Hasan was not a risk. Kohl asked what changes are being made now to protect our soldiers now. Holder: we need to understand what happened, but only then can we prevent another tragedy. Holder just lost it trying to say how disturbed he was with Hasan’s contacts (seems to almost have stumbled). Claimed they had two weeks to determine what happened.

Holder made the idiotic statement they will not fail to win guilty charges in court – which is dumb for any prosecutor to say.

10:41 AM Eastern – Sen Feinstein – supports bringing terrorists to America, give them constitutional rights, put NY back through the nightmare of 9-11, all because military commissions are difficult. 9-11 was an act of War AND a crime – Lame.

10:55 AM Eastern - sorry folks, work beckons, have to stop listening to CSPAN

Our national debt is now $12 trillion dollars – or $40,000 for every man woman and child in the country. For a family of four that is $160,000 dollars you owe Uncle Sam because Uncle Sam is a drunken sailor who has no damn self control or respect for your hard earned money and your real needs.

President Obama and the liberals running Congress added over 10% ($1.4 trillion) of that debt in the last year, and they could possibly add another 15% ($1.8 trillion) next year.

Got Sarah’s book (actually we got two copies so the political junkies did not have to take turns) and just started reading it. Might comment on it more – probably won’t though. It doesn’t seem to require a lot of over analyzing and fact checking by media and blogger mental midgets.

One of the things Americans despise about the Political Industrial Complex is the idea that the complex must interpret events and information for us normal Americans. Class A arrogance without anything to back it up. Most talking heads and news media folks can’t grasp a majority of what real life is all about, let alone interpret it. They don’t understand what it takes to feed this nation, educate this nation, defend this nation, expand this nation’s economy, etc. When it comes to science – forget about it.

The news media in general are watchers who keep failing in their attempt to explain what we all do. They are not even a worthy peanut gallery, self absorbed as they are.

Palin’s book is doing one important thing – it is sifting the angry, insecure elitist from the sympathetic and respectful. Sarah is still one of us from Main Street – we all live a variant of the “American Life”. And we are all rogues – in that we all cherish our individuality and when we break the settled pattern and succeed. We all do this in our day to day lives, when we crack the tough problems that stumped others. And we all take our turn with our coworkers, friends and family in going rogue and solving a problem. We feel pride when we do it, we are genuinely impressed when someone we know and/or love has their moment.

Which is why attacking Sarah can ruin credibility forever. The small minded obsessives (e.g., little Andy Sullivan comes to mind) who feel a need to be bitterly negative because she wrote a book about herself and her experiences in being a woman candidate for the 2nd top office of the land are not exposing Sarah! The ugly reflection on America we see comes from Sarah’s enemies.

Populism is back because the Political Industrial Complex has failed repeatedly to grow up, straighten up and get something done right (I would say a recent  exception to that rule was President George W Bush on many, many issues). And when that happens, We The People clean house – and not just elected houses (as can be noted in the demise of the lame news media and biased and shoddy products).

Update: Palin’s book is already in the next book run, but they are going to need a lot more the 1.6 million copies.

Update: Palin on Rush:

Part One

Part Two

There are a number of disturbing yet reasonable scenarios that can be drawn from the Ft Hood Massacre by traitor and terrorist Major Hasan. My speculation has been centered around the political correctness dripping from the Obama administration and AG Eric Holder (see here for all my posts to date).

But that is not the only scenario I have been contemplating, just the one I think is the most probable. The other top candidate is a variant on the theme someone in this administration shut down the investigation for reasons not yet explained, which resulted in the murder of 13 Americans and an unborn child.

The aspects of this disaster which have bugged me for some time was why Hasan was promoted and shipped to Afghanistan only weeks after the investigation shut down. The timing of this is as disturbingly coincidental as the fact the investigation shut down about the time Obama’s Department of Justice would have to renew it.

Today another intriguing theory has been postulated, which is in line with some of the other scenarios I have been quietly contemplating:

Ugly hints to the real answers are emerging. We now know that Hasan at some point was being tracked by the Defense Intelligence Agency, CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and Army Intelligence. Routine investigations because of heritage, religion or odd behavior do not justify this kind of intelligence coverage. This surveillance is what the intelligence services do to support a full, on-going intelligence operation.

Were Hasan and his contacts seen as a way into Al Qaeda? If the answer is yes, was Hasan selected as unwitting bait to be dangled in front of potential Al Qaeda operatives? Was the operation thought more important than doubts about Hasan’s stability and loyalty? Was this troubled man so tempting a door into Al Qaeda that Army Intelligence or an affiliated service decided to walk through it? The worst answer is that, like 9/11, once again innocent Americans died because intelligence agencies believed that their operations were more important than American lives.

My personal variation on this theme again leads back to AG Holder and his bizarre decisions regarding terrorists and the protection of Americans from wiretapping and investigation based on NSA intelligence leads.

What if the answer for AG Holder and the Obama administration was to get Hasan out of country so there would be (a) no conflict with their liberal ideology about investigating Americans here at home and (b) as a risky attempt to put some bait out there for al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan to take?

This theory seems too crazy for me at the moment, but I must admit I have wondered how much of this was ideologically driven ineptitude, complacency driven ineptitude or plain old arrogant ineptitude (which is how I would categorize this latest theory). Hopefully we will learn soon.

In another bit of news regarding Jihad terrorism by Americans Rusty Shackleford over at Jawa Report notes the deafening silence of reporting on another incident that should be in the news.

I don’t have the stomach to go over the whole mess again with the fake stimulus bill the liberals crammed down our throats (along with its massive debt). I’ll let others explain:

Ed Morrissey notes this great news piece in San Diego with Barbara Boxer and the ONE real job created from millions of dollars in deficit spending.

The folks at Powerline discover multiple mythical congressional districts with thousands of fictional jobs in Minnesota (and link elsewhere for the state of other states and the mythical recovery).

ABC News’ The Note also cannot resist taking on the pathetic fiction of the Obama administration’s wild claims.

The Washington Examiner is keeping tabs of all the stories, noting more than 10% of the reported jobs saved/created are turning out to be bad fiction.

And all of this is AFTER the Obama administration filtered out reports that were clearly too good to be true.

My previous posts on the misinformation being spewed on the jobs picture in America:

It’s Still The Unemployment Driving The Electorate

More Bogus Job Claims From The Obama Ministry Of Misinformation

Bogus Jobs “Created Or Saved” Claims By Obama Administration

And the real data on the pathetic stimulus spending to date and the rising poll of unemployed and underemployed can be found in this post:

DC Liberals Have Bankrupt America After Only One Year In Power

It is just all too depressing.

More evidence someone made a horrific mistake in the Obama administration when they prematurely shut down the  Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into Major Hasan, the traitor who massacred 13 people and an unborn child on 11/5/09:

Colonel Anthony Febbo at Fort Hood reportedly told investigators he was twice contacted by Hasan, on Nov. 2 and a week earlier in October, about the question of whether he could legally provide information on “war crimes” he had learned in the course of psychiatric counseling he provided soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Col. Febbo told ABC News he could not comment because of the on-going investigation.

You know, only a very disturbed American would contemplate such nonsense. The article goes on to imply this was the Army’s fault, but if the FBI led task force had not shut down their investigation OR had told the Army about Hasan’s pen pal moments with a radical Imam then the Army would have possibly alerted to the danger (no guarantees).

It seems one FBI supervisor latched onto the review of an Army investigator into Hasan’s emails to claim their was insufficient evidence to challenge Hasan’s right to free speech. Which in turn left 13 Americans and one unborn child without their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Whoever this supervisor is, I hope he/she has the moral courage to step forward and explain themselves to the American people.

Update: President Obama is stonewalling Congress in their effort to uncover what happened:

The first public congressional hearing on the Fort Hood attack will not include testimony from any current federal law enforcement, military or intelligence officials because the Obama administration “declined to provide any” such witnesses, according to a Senate committee source.

And so the cover up continues. The congressional investigation into why the FBI led JTTF prematurely shut down their effort to connect the dots has nothing to do with the criminal case against Hasan. The case against Hasan for murder is pretty much a slam dunk. But how and why the FBI under Obama decided to close down investigating Hasan and possibly detecting him before he killed is completely outside the scope of the murder trials.

Cries not to politicize or impact the ongoing investigation are spin – nothing more.

UPDATES BELOW!

There were plenty of warning lights flashing on Major Hasan, who killed 13 Americans and one unborn child in a terrorist massacre at Ft Hood. For example, here is a good list of what should have been discovered when the emails between Hasan and radical Imam al-Aulaqi operating in Yemen activated two task forces – whose charter is to detect and thwart attacks inside the US:

• Hasan had business cards that proclaimed him an “SoA (SWT).” The first part means Soldier of Allah. The second part is an acronym for “Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala,” which means “Glory to God.”
• He had an e-mail address using the first name “Abduwall” – “slave of” God, in Arabic.
• He had contacts with radical Yemeni Muslim cleric and Al Qaeda recruiter Anwar al Awlaki – contacts intercepted but never determined to be actionable by law enforcement.
• He made statements online, according to reports, justifying the actions of suicide bombers as similar to American soldiers who hurl their bodies on exploding grenades to protect others.
• A former colleague said Hasan made outlandish comments in person. “He said maybe Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor,” retired Col. Terry Lee told Fox News.
• An officer said Hasan was very vocal about “holding Sharia law above the Constitution.”
• While at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Hasan gave a presentation in which he warned fellow physicians that to avoid “adverse events,” the military should allow Muslim soldiers to be released as conscientious objectors.
• Also while at Walter Reed, he reportedly was reprimanded for trying to convert patients to Islam, while criticizing those with drug and alcohol problems for their “unholy” behavior.
• And Friday, reports said authorities were examining whether Hasan had sent money to Pakistan.

The only way to miss all theses flashing red dots, in my opinion, is to shutdown the investigations prematurely. I have long wondered why anyone in the FBI would rush out to media on the day of the attack to claim this incident was not a terrorist attack. I can understand caution on concluding this was coordinated effort or just a ‘lone wolf’. But I cannot fathom what drove them to such a bold and preemptive move to spin this story in a particular direction.

I am also now suspicious about how quickly the Hasan-Aulaqi emails hit the President’s desk:

Shortly after the Nov. 5 shootings, Obama reportedly saw e-mails that Hasan had sent to a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen whom the FBI has investigated since the 1990s for possible terrorist ties.

Why would the President of the United States be looking at these emails at the same time his people are trying to cast the incident as something other than an Islamist massacre? Were the emails the ONLY evidence the Joint Terrorism Task Force had at the time? Or were the emails the excuse used to shutdown the dot connecting by a far left administration bent on pushing its ideology no matter what the cost in American lives? Could this be ineptitude:? I guess, but then why all the press briefings focused on preserving the right of free speech for Major Hasan while the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was snuffed out for 14 other human beings?

The argument AG Holder has made many times when it comes to the changes President Bush initiated after 9-11 to protect this nation from infiltration and deadly attack was protecting free speech. Here are Holder’s own words on monitoring US Citizens as potential terrorist threats:

Stop domestic search and seizures without warrant and end wiretapping of citizens.

“We have lost our way before,” Holder told the 350 attendees at the Friday evening session. “Now we must step back into the shining path envisioned by our founding fathers in such icons of liberty as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

Eric Holder was quite non-committal in his confirmation hearing when it came to the FISA changes, he hedged on his previous strong stances against the FISA changes. Just enough fog to get confirmed. But he never committed to uphold those changes.

What I don’t think Holder and Obama expected was that they would shutdown an investigation that was actually on the trail of a future mass murderer. I think they are scrambling to recover from the fact someone shutdown the Hasan investigation and it resulted in mass murder.

Along those lines, the Washington Post has a very disturbing interview (sort of) with Imam al-Aulaqi, where more dots come through:

In his first interview with a journalist since the Fort Hood rampage, Yemeni American cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi said that he neither ordered nor pressured Maj. Nidal M. Hasan to harm Americans, but that he considered himself a confidant of the Army psychiatrist who was given a glimpse via e-mail into Nadal’s growing discomfort with the U.S. military.

Apparently al-Aulaqi was viewing different emails than the JTTF and President Obama. How could Hasan’s growing discomfort with the US military be confused with his ‘research’?

There’s more:

But Aulaqi’s statements reflect the increasingly radical path he has taken since settling in Yemen in 2004. Print, video and audio files of his words have been found on the private hard drives of terrorism suspects in Canada in 2006 and in the United States in 2007 and 2008. He also wrote congratulations to al Shabaab, an Islamic extremist group leading an insurgency in Somalia, after it apparently used the first U.S.-citizen suicide bomber last fall.

“Fighting against the US army is an Islamic duty today,” Aulaqi allegedly wrote on his Web site after Hasan’s ties to him were reported after the shootings. “The only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the US army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.”

On Dec. 23, 2008, days after he said Hasan first e-mailed him, Aulaqi also posted online words encouraging attacks on U.S. soldiers, writing: “The bullets of the fighters of Afghanistan and Iraq are a reflection of the feelings of the Muslims towards America,” according to the NEFA Foundation, a private South Carolina group that monitors extremist Web sites.

This doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect these dots. Hasan emails the Imam, who responds not directly but with a public post reasserting the idea that a good (radical) muslim will commit violent and cowardly acts in the name of Jihad.

And there is more:

In the e-mails, Hasan appeared to question U.S. involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and often used “evidence from sharia that what America was doing should be confronted,” the cleric told Shaea.

Woah, how could the JTTF miss this? Did our President read these emails after the massacre and conclude “its all free speech – too bad so many had to die”?

I doubt it. But I can see damage control going on. I can see efforts to try and hide the fact that someone shutdown the Hasan investigation prematurely – this we now know indeed did happen. What we don’t know, but hope we learn this week in congressional hearings, is what other evidence did the JTTF have in hand and where they pressured (through lack of DoJ support) to close up their work based on liberal ideological views.

I just can’t believe we detected and stopped so many other incidents of terrorism and this one was so handled with such ineptitude. It would be the odd exception to the track record, which tells me some other factor was probably involved.

Update: Ed Morrissey notes how the ‘it was innocent research’ defense just went out the window with this reporting.

Update: OK, this really nails it. While a single FBI Supervisor was shutting down the Hasan probe …

The official says a Defense Department worker and an FBI supervisor agreed to end the assessment of Nidal Malik Hasan earlier this year.

Note the supervisor and ‘the worker’ agreed to end the investigation. More likely the supervisor ordered the worker to end it. All the while the FBI was investigating a reverend who exercised his free speech rights outside the chinese consulate:

Federal agents came to the home of Rev. Mahoney to question him about laying roses and praying in front of the Chinese Embassy on June 4th of this year.

The purpose of the prayer vigil was to honor and remember the heroic students who were brutalized in Tiananmen Square 20 years ago and to call upon the Chinese government to protect human rights and honor religious freedom.

Yeah, this really stinks.

Good news from the liberal climate fringe – the fantasy science is retreating for a time:

President Barack Obama and other world leaders agreed today that next month’s much-anticipated climate change summit will be merely a way station, not the once hoped-for end point, in the search for a worldwide global warming treaty.

The 192-nation climate conference beginning in three weeks in Copenhagen had originally been intended to produce a new global climate-change treaty. Hopes for that have dimmed lately. But comments by Obama and fellow leaders at a hastily arranged breakfast meeting here on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit served to put the final nail in any remaining expectations for the December summit.

“There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be negotiated between now and Copenhagen which starts in 22 days,” said Michael Froman, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for international economic matters.

Not only is there a solid economic reason not to try any more risky and whacky schemes, there is good scientific evidence building that the whole theory of human produced CO2 causing run away warming is nonsense. In fact, one website has collected 450 peer reviewed papers (knowing full well being ‘peer reviewed’ is not a measure of the truth and accuracy of the conclusions, but just the methodology) that show the UN IPCC conclusions (created from their biased and non scientific review process) are wrong.

What these ‘world leaders’ have done in their retreat is recognize there is a sizable group of very knowledgeable people who have been shooting holes in Al Gore’s high school level grasp of the cosmos and man’s place in this complex reality. The global warming alarmists have been trying to pretend this group does not exist, but it does and it is not going away any time soon. The data the IPCC theories were based on is shoddy and indefensible because it was in many cases selected to meet the preconceptions. The IPCC models are incomplete and have failed to predict anything, including hindsight (feed them historical data and they can’t recreate the past). And nature has defied their predictions continuously – they have not even had their stopped watch moment yet.

There are many other factors driving our climate and its complex cycles. They all show much stronger correlations and predicted the current cooling phase, while the IPCC models are now expensive junk. I think world leaders realize they don’t have the brain wattage to control where all this is heading, and smartly retreated until the issue is resolved through scientific debate.

Either that or they are just smart enough to realize the people are fed up with useless taxes and wasteful spending during a historic period of economic challenges.

Back in February 2006, as the country started to step away from President Bush and the GOP, I took a cue from a Rush Limbaugh thread about how the liberals wanted to surrender the war on terror and created a twisted variant of the 1994 GOP Contract with America and turned it into the 2006 Democrat Contract With al Qaeda. It was meant to be a warning to all those who thought we could try out a radicalized liberal democrat party instead of the tried and true GOP. It was a reminder that every political choice has warts, but sometimes those warts can be deadly.

Given the recent news about Ft Hood and the 9-11 trials I went back and realized this rare bit of prescience on my part could use another viewing (with updated commentary in green text). So here it is again, nearly 4 years later:

This 2006 Congressional Democrat Contract With Al Qaeda lays out what the Democrat Party promises to do if they are given majorities in Congress this fall:

On the first day of the 104th Congress, the new Democrat majority will immediately pass the following major legislation, aimed at restoring the pre 9-11 mirage of security and world harmony and ending this Administration’s policies for National Security:

• FIRST , we will finally kill the Patriot Act so that no member of Al Qaeda will fear using our libraries to access international websites, access their email, or do basic research on major US installations and population centers. We will guarantee full privacy due anyone who makes it to our shores without question. In addition, we will roll back all provisions that put terrorism on an equal footing with Drug Traffickers and Organized Crime, which we understand greatly insults members of Al Qaeda who consider themselves above drug lords. - Since I wrote this nearly 4 years ago the Democrats have attacked the Patriot Act every year, and are this day sitting on critical extensions to the act which are due to sunset in only a few weeks.
• SECOND , We will enact legislation to release all Al Qaeda members now held in custody in the GITMO Gulag, while providing legal counsel to all who have been unfairly detained during this unfortunate international misunderstanding between Al Qaeda and America. We will ensure all detainees have options for bail and parole so they can continue with their life’s efforts while the legal issues surrounding their detention are worked out. Every ex-detainee will be provided the services of an ACLU lawyer. - Most disturbingly, AG Eric Holder just made this promise a fact. I further predict the US will lose the case because the constitutional rights of the defendants were completely obliterated (since they were actually prisoners of war). To allow KSM to be tried would be to allow US Citizens to be pulled off the streets without warrant, to incarcerate them for years without charge, to interrogate them without being read their rights and without counsel, and to allow harsh interrogation methods to be used. No court in the country would allow these acts to become allowable law enforcement methods. QED, the bastards go free. I did emphasize in bold another promise made good regarding these ‘overseas contingency operations’ and the ‘manmade disasters’ here in the US (formally known as the war on terror and terrorist attacks).
• THIRD , we will pass legislation ensuring that all Al Qaeda members will be free from government monitoring of their phone calls and emails with comrades back home monitored without probable cause. Probable cause will not include the normal desire to call home to friends and family. We see this act as protecting US citizens and Al Qaeda alike from warrantless surveillance. - Sounds like what happened with Major Hasan, doesn’t it. Did Holder and Obama make good on this commitment? How many other Hasans are still out there, unmonitored?
• FOURTH , as part of our revamping of immigration laws, we will ensure Al Qaeda members are treated the same as any other illegal immigrant now in America. We will provide you amnesty, a driver’s license, health care and education support once you are able to sneak past our borders. - Reporting has this one coming early next year
• FIFTH , as with warrantless electronic surveillance and in anticipation of pending civil lawsuits, we plan to pass legislation that bans warrantless searches of person and luggage at airports and other major transportation centers. It makes no sense to allow random searches of travelers if we are going to end targeted surveillance of communications. And we find both actions to be religious profiling and against the common sense norms of all liberal Americans. - While not exactly the same, the case of the Flying Imams and how they successfully sued airport security after their ‘incident’ proves that liberal forces are at work tearing down our security walls, one brick at a time.
• SIXTH , Also, in line with the unfair targeting of Al Qaeda communications and persons travelling, we plan to submit legislation ending the practice of no-fly lists. This practice is biased towards people with common names and has limited the rights to travel of nuns and babies in the past. - Each time there is a false positive on these lists (a sad reality because human systems are never perfect) we hear the outcry. Of course, the alternative is a country wide open to even known terrorists. This one still has a lot of work to be done on it.
• SEVENTH , in an effort to demonstrate our sincere apologies for the actions of President Bush towards Al Qaeda, we plan to return the State of Iraq to the despot dictator of Al Qaeda’s choice by calling for the immediate withdrawal of our military forces to the safety of European soil. We encourage Al Qaeda to do what they please with the Iraqi people. - The best thing about President George Bush is he did not allow this to happen. But the democrats sure as hell tried the year after I wrote the contract. In 2007 they tried by all means to surrender Iraq and stop The Surge which freed Iraq and dealt al Qaeda a serious blow. If anything, this contract item emphasizes the difference between today’s Democrats and the GOP. Their paths into the future could not be more different.
• EIGHTH , we will submit and pass legislation that will mandate any questioning by US agents of Al Qaeda members to (a) be done in the presence of an ACLU lawyer, (b) never last more than 30 minutes, (c) be done indoors, in climate controlled conditions, (d) include an offering of proper food and beverage and (e) require every question to use the word ‘please’.- Another promise being made good by Holder and Obama and Pelosi. The attacks on the US agents who followed their orders and interrogated the terrorists and saved lives as been a crowning liberal achievement with this Congress and this White House. One can only guess what changes have been enacted in how we deal with mass murderers on Jihad against this country and its people.
• NINETH , we promise to immediately begin impeachment of Al Qaeda’s most dangerous enemy, the Imperial President W Bush, and we will promise to not stop our efforts until we have removed this thorn in Al Qaeda’s side – even if we have to make up scandals to get it done. - Another promise which mostly failed, but not for a lack of trying by the far left. And this year we have seen all out attacks on President Bush’s character. If you can’t impeach the man, impeach his reputation and record.

We the undersigned candidates of the Democrat National Party do swear that if elected, and given control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, we will enact the above Contract With Al Qaeda.

Its sad how much of that contract has come true over the years. And even when it did not come true, it is stunning how hard the far left tried to make it happen. This contract is mostly completed, and it seems Obama will trade a failed Afghanistan for a failed Iraq to fulfill the contract. Pathetic.