† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: Sales of anti-Obama T-shirts are a sure-fire money-maker on conservative Web sites, but now “liberal streetwear boutique” Freshjive has tweaked Shepard Fairey's iconic Obama poster to protest President Barack Hussein Obama’s failure to bring about the change that moonbats thought they were voting for, reports The Week. The Freshjive shirt “combines the message ‘Hope is fading fast’ with an image of the President's face that appears to be melting.”

[Hat Tip: The Heel, an Ivy-educated attorney with a prestigious New York firm, and occasional contributor to this blog.]

† Global Warming Is In The Eye Of The Beholder: The New York Times reports that “[s]ome prominent climate scientists are calling for changes in the way research on global warming is conducted” after a whistleblower “liberated” E-mail messages and documents exchanged between prominent global warming proponents that “damaged the public’s trust in the evidence that humans are dangerously warming the planet”:

The most serious criticisms leveled at the authors of the e-mail messages revolve around three issues.

One is whether the correspondence reveals efforts by scientists to shield raw data, gleaned from tree rings and other indirect indicators of climate conditions, preventing it from being examined by independent researchers. Among those who say it does is Stephen McIntyre, a retired Canadian mining consultant who has a popular skeptics’ blog, climateaudit.org. A second issue is whether disclosed documents, said to be from the stolen cache, prove that the data underlying climate scientists’ conclusions about warming are murkier than the scientists have said. The documents include files of raw computer code and a computer programmer’s years-long log documenting his frustrations over data gathered from countries in the Northern Hemisphere.

Finally, questions have been raised about whether the e-mail messages indicated that climate scientists tried to prevent the publication of papers written by climate skeptics, which were described by the scientists in the e-mail messages as “garbage” and “fraud.”

John Tierney, one of the paper’s columnists, curiously downplays “Climategate” as a public relations debacle:

As the scientists denigrate their critics in the e-mail messages, they seem oblivious to one of the greatest dangers in the climate-change debate: smug groupthink. These researchers, some of the most prominent climate experts in Britain and America, seem so focused on winning the public-relations war that they exaggerate their certitude - and ultimately undermine their own cause. …

Contempt for critics is evident over and over again in the hacked e-mail messages, as if the scientists were a priesthood protecting the temple from barbarians. Yes, some of the skeptics have political agendas, but so do some of the scientists. Sure, the skeptics can be cranks and pests, but they have identified genuine problems in the historical reconstructions of climate, as in the debate they inspired about the “hockey stick” graph of temperatures over the past millennium. …

Trying to prevent skeptics from seeing the raw data was always a questionable strategy, scientifically. Now it looks like dubious public relations, too.

But National Review columnist Mark Steyn makes the same point that The Stiletto made back in August 2006 – that political correctness has perverted the scientific process (“Like Pavlov’s famous dogs drooling at the prospect of getting their reward, too many scientists have been trained by the system to massage – or falsify, if need be – data to make a study come out the way ‘it’s supposed to.’”):

[I]f you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it’s that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the “peer-review” process. …

[T]hey turned the process into what James Lewis calls the Chicago machine politics of international science. The headline in the Wall Street Journal Europe is unimproveable: “How To Forge A Consensus.” Pressuring publishers, firing editors, blacklisting scientists: That’s “peer review,” climate-style.

Once upon a time, science was impervious to the passions and fashions of the day. Today, scientists routinely publish “peer-reviewed” papers that are fairy tales.

† How ACORN Got Buried By “Squirrelly Right-Wingers”: David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a memorandum advising that the Obama administration can lawfully honor contracts with ACORN that were signed before Congress banned the government from providing money to the group, reports The New York Times:

A Housing and Urban Development Department lawyer asked the Justice Department whether the new law meant that pre-existing contracts with Acorn should be broken. And in a memorandum signed Oct. 23 and posted online this week, Mr. Barron said the government should continue to make payments to Acorn as required by such contracts.

The new law “should not be read as directing or authorizing HUD to breach a pre-existing binding contractual obligation to make payments to Acorn or its affiliates, subsidiaries or allied organizations where doing so would give rise to contractual liability,” Mr. Barron wrote.

In a related development, ACORN has filed a lawsuit arguing that the Congressional funding ban Congress is unconstitutional, because it amounts to a “bill of attainder” meant specifically to punish the group.

† Lawyers Defending Terrorists: Gotta Do It, But Don’t Gotta Like It (second item): In this Human Events commentary, National security expert Rowan Scarborough, who wrote “Rumsfeld's War,” rails at Blank Rome, Convington & Burling (which boasted Attorney General Eric Holder as a partner), Paul, Weiss and other Big Law firms that “have donated hundreds of millions of dollars in free legal services to terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison”:

Their work, bolstered by left-wing activists groups, has helped to free, or force the transfer, of hundreds of al Qaeda suspects to third countries. Some have gone back to terrorism and the job of trying to kill Americans. …

It was the constant pressure of activist defense lawyers, in the courts and in public debate, that helped persuade the Obama administration to bring KSM, as he is known, to Manhattan from his Guantanamo Bay prison cell for a civilian, rather than, a military trial. …

The army of lawyers, number over 500 by some counts, tied up the commission system in series of law suits and appeals, making it impossible to put any of the war criminals on trial for years. They have used the courts to assault the commission system as unconstitutional, even though there is a history here and internationally of trying war criminals such as KSM in special tribunals. …

Al Qaeda's courtroom advocates generally have fought two battles: filing habeas corpus petitions to gain jurisdiction in federal courts; and defending detainees within the military tribunals. …

There were once over 800 detainees in Cuba, compared with just over 200 today. Intelligence sources tell Human Events there is evidence that more than 100 released suspects have gone back to terrorism.

Remember all this the next time some Dem operative derides the Bush administration for not bringing Gitmo detainees to justice during its eight-year tenure.

† What Freedom Of Speech Means To Muslims: The United Arab Emirates yanked the Sunday edition of The Times of London because of “a graphic illustrating Dubai's ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum sinking under his emirates' vast debt problems,” reports The Wall Street Journal:

An official at the National Media Council in Abu Dhabi said the block was imposed because the picture of Sheik Mohammed that accompanied a story in the paper entitled 'The sinking of Dubai's dream' was "offensive." …

Under the U.A.E.'s media code, publications are prohibited from criticizing the sheikdom's rulers. Local media and government officials have criticized international press coverage of Dubai's debt crisis.

† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: With college tuition rising faster than the price of postage stamps (fourth item) The Washington Post reports that high-achieving high school students are saving money by enrolling in community colleges that offer academically challenging honors programs, planning to transfer to pricey elite schools to finish their bachelor’s degrees:

Kira Cassels applied to 11 colleges and got in to every one. The kitchen of her Laurel home came to resemble a high school guidance office, the breakfast table buried beneath brochures and financial aid forms from destinations such as the University of Virginia and Franklin & Marshall College.

Over two arduous weeks last spring, Cassels sat with her parents and weighed the costs and benefits of each program until the list was narrowed to one: an honors track at the local community college. …

Honors enrollment at Howard Community College, a 9,000-student campus in Columbia, has risen from 123 to 185 in the past two years. Cassels enrolled in the signature program, Rouse Scholars, which takes 45 high school graduates each year and offers a proven pipeline to four-year schools. The average Rouse scholar has a 3.7 grade-point average and a combined SAT score of 1596 out of a possible 2400 points. …

Enrollment in honors programs at community colleges seems to be growing faster than overall enrollment at the schools, which surged by about 10 percent this year in the Washington region, as students of various age groups and socioeconomic levels sought affordable higher education. …

Cassels and her parents chose the community college with the same sense of thrift that guides them these days at the grocery store or the mall. "We're not hurting for money," she said. But she and her parents didn't feel comfortable committing $20,000 to $30,000 a year in tuition and fees, room and board, the amount they would have owed on top of the five-figure scholarships offered by several four-year colleges.

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, Why We Need Gitmo): The Washington Post contends that it will be all but impossible to find 12 impartial jurors to sit in judgment of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, seeing as how 2,752 people lost their lives in the World Trade Center terror attack, and as one NYer who would have wanted to sit on the jury “to get vengeance … I mean justice” puts it, “Everyone was involved, when you really think about it.” Another NYer – a self-described liberal – suggests that Gitmo detainees be strung up: "Hang 'em right over there [in the hole where the Twin Towers once stood]. Put the girder up.” Guess President Barack Hussein Obama knew what he was talking about when he assured skeptics that KSL would be found guilty and executed. Still, NY is a famously liberal town – September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaouione is alive today thanks to an anti-death penalty holdout on his jury – and if KSL gets off on a technicality, wanna bet that his lawyer will immediately file an application with the feds togrant his client political asylum? After all, he gave up actionable intelligence on al-Qaeda after being waterboarded, and his life won’t be worth a plugged nickel in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Nationalized Healthcare Always Leads To Rationing): The Dems have done the math and figured out that adding 30 million people to the patient pool without increasing the primary-care physician and general surgeon pool will make it impossible for the newly insured to find a doctor. Not to worry – they have a plan, reports The Wall Street Journal:

Medical colleges, backed by some Democrats, want funding for 15,000 more slots for graduate medical residencies in primary care and general surgery. The government currently pays part of the cost for such residencies through Medicare. …

Sen. Charles Schumer of New York plans to introduce an amendment that would add about 2,000 residency spots to the current 100,000. The amendment would give first priority to primary-care doctors and general surgeons. …

The Senate bill [also] increases funding for the National Health Service Corps, which helps repay student loans for doctors, nurse practitioners and dentists who work in underserved parts of the country. Primary-care doctors who participate can get up to $50,000 of loans repaid. The bill also reallocates some unused residency slots toward higher-need areas.

Whatever Congress does, the American Medical Association estimates that by 2020 there will 85,000 fewer doctors than needed, particularly in primary care, cardiology, oncology and general surgery, especially in rural areas. Paying off student loans may not be enough of an incentive to lure students into primary care instead of high-paying specialties.

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, Never Again Or Forgive And Forget?): The trial of former Nazi guard John Demjanjuk for the murder of 27,900 Jews began in Munich, reports The Christian Science Monitor:

Demjanjuk's attorney Ulrich Busch opened the case today by filing a motion accusing the court and prosecutors of treating the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk more harshly than German-born prison guards, some of whom were acquitted.

"How can you say that those who gave the orders were innocent ... and the one who received the orders is guilty?" Mr. Busch asked the court Monday. "There is a moral and legal double standard being applied today."

Busch also said that Demjanjuk, who was deported to Germany from the US after living and working as an autoworker in the Cleveland area for over 50 years, was "on the same level" as Holocaust victims because he was forced to work in the camp – an assertion that angered survivors who were present in the courtroom. The family of the 88-year-old defendant claims he is terminally ill and therefore should not face trial. Throughout proceedings today, Demjanjuk appeared to be in pain. Doctors who examined Demjanjuk said he was fit to appear in court if the trial were limited to two 90-minute sessions per day, which it was.. …

Demjanjuk's trial is expected to be the last major legal proceeding connected to Nazi war crimes, according to Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. In a recent interview, Zuroff said that all Nazis accused of war crimes have either been caught or have passed away, leaving Demjanjuk the last high-profile defendant.

If convicted, Demjanjuk could be sentenced to as much as 15 years in prison.

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, A High-Energy Particle Physics Rapper): The Large Hadron Collider shot beams of protons at energies measuring 1.18 teraelectronvolts, beating the previous world record of 0.98 TeV set by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's Tevatron collider in 2001, reports TechNewsWorld. Particle physics researchers think the LHC’s highest capacity will be around 7 TeV.