Equal Time?

According to Drudge, an editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the New York Times, though the paper published an essay written by Barack Obama just last week.

‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece,’ NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain’s staff. ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.’

Now, I don’t think it bodes well for any paper to play these sorts of games, but I also don’t see anything particularly infuriating about the Times denying a candidate space on its page. It’s the paper’s prerogative, after all.

Politically, though, this double standard will serve McCain well. The conservative base has no interest in reading what the candidate says about Iraq in a New York Times op-ed. But the base can now be appropriately infuriated with the liberal New York Times, which denied a Republican candidate the chance to write an op-ed on Iraq that the base wasn’t going to read anyway. There’s a huge difference.

The original McCain essay can be found here (scroll down.)

(Cross-posted Post-Ed Blog)

These folks are scientists, right?

On the same day that Al Gore delivered one of the most "ridiculous" speeches of his career, The American Physical Society, an organization representing 50,000 physicists, reversed* begun to debate its stance on climate change and is now claiming that many of its members do not believe in human-induced global warming theory.

APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity — the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause — has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling.

A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate. Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton’s paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors"

I guess the debate about the anthropological warming isn’t over yet. Though I’m sure one of these guys has gotten a coupon from "Big Oil" so we can dismiss the whole thing.

UPDATE: The Daily Tech piece was somewhat misleading. A reader pointed out to me that it is "APS Forum on Physics and Society," that is sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. So members, not APS leadership, have challenged the APS’s official position, which has not changed. It doesn’t change the fact that debate is ongoing but it is an important distinction that should be noted by those emailing and posting this story.

The Colorado Model

I had the pleasure of meeting the Fred Barnes, executive editor of Weekly Standard and Fox News personality, a couple of weeks ago when he was visiting Denver for the Independence Institute’s sixth annual Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Party. (Which was somewhat anti-climatic considering Fred doesn’t drink, smoke or shoot.)

Barnes spent some time hanging around Colorado. And here is his cover story assessing the state’s political situation.

The Democratic surge in Colorado reflects the national trend, but it involves a great deal more. There’s something unique going on in Colorado that, if copied in other states, has the potential to produce sweeping Democratic gains nationwide. That something is the “Colorado Model,” and it’s certain to be a major topic of discussion when Democrats convene in Denver in the last week of August for their national convention.

It’s a worthwhile read even for those who understand the dynamics of Colorado politics. But if you happen to be a member of the state’s shrinking Republican Party, it’s sure to be sobering.

(Cross-posted Post-Ed Notes.)

Addendum to Ramsey column

I’ve received a ton of responses to Thursday’s column which focused on the despicable behavior of Boulder DA Mary Lacy and her dubious “clearing” and apology to the Ramseys. Around 75 percent of the emails and calls I received were supportive.

In a world crawling with batty conspiracy theorists, I ran across a particularly mind-numbing post by a fringy blowhard named “Dr. Sammy“. It’s a nearly unreadable tirade full of ad hominem attacks and baseless assertions.

The only reason I mention “Dr. Sammy” is that he, like others who are emotionally invested in seeing the Ramseys cleared, have held up the work of Professor Michael Tracey as the exemplar of fairness and professionalism in the Ramsey case. Yes, the same Michael Tracey brought us the mentally unstable John Mark Karr as the fall guy on his never-ending crusade to exonerate the Ramseys. For more on Tracey, read Alan Prendergast and Michael Roberts in Westword.

I don’t know Tracey personally, though I may have met him at some point, and he may be the finest professor in Colorado. What I do know, however, is that his actions during the Karr fiasco disqualify him from being the go-to guy on the topic.

To be frank, the rehashing of the JonBenet case is, for the most part, a worthless endeavor. (One commenter on the DPO claims that I have, like radio talk show host Peter Boyles, been “harping” on this topic for years. I’m not sure what Peter has done; I wasn’t here. But in approximately 400+ columns I’ve written for the Post since 2004, I’ve editorialized on the case twice. Once when Karr was brought in and once on Thursday.)

The focus here is Mary Lacy’s irresponsible, unprofessional and hypocritical behavior. For anyone who still doubts Lacy’s breathtaking incompetence, peruse these quotes from a piece by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, who was an investigative reporter on the case. (Yes, I realize Shapiro has his own bias, but the Lacy quotes speak for themselves.)

In 2006, after Lacy extradited John Mark Karr, an otherwise innocent man, from Thailand, to erroneously charge him with the murder, she announced: “The DNA could be an artifact. It isn’t necessarily the killer’s. There’s a probability that it’s the killer’s. But it could be something else.

And …

In fact, during the Karr debacle, Lacy also said that “no one is really cleared of a homicide until there’s a conviction in court, beyond a reasonable doubt. And I don’t think you will get any prosecutor, unless they were present with the person at the time of the crime, to clear someone.

What has changed for Lacy? If she didn’t know then that the DNA was the killer’s, how does she know it now? If DNA was there, finding a trace amount in another spot doesn’t change any facts. Nor does it “clear” the Ramseys.

(Cross-posted on Post-Ed Notes.)

Drew Carey on paternalism

Be a patriot! Get a job

From my new column on the meaning of patriotism:

“Loving your country shouldn’t just mean watching fireworks on the Fourth of July,” Barack Obama explained to a crowd in Colorado Springs this week. “Loving your country must mean accepting your responsibility to do your part to change it.”

Yes. He said must.

Any Means Necessary?

Ward Connerly’s Amendment 46 would eliminate affirmative-action programs in state hiring, contracting and education in Colorado. As in other states, there seems to be plenty of support for such a move. Opponents of the anti-discrimination initiative — already caught in some shenanigans – are using predictable tactics to keep this bill off the ballot: accuse circulators of fooling voters into signing. Everyone, you see, is a vicitim.

Local conservative enfant terrible and executive director of the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, Jessica Peck Corry, told the Post recently that, “They don’t want to have a discussion about the merits because when they do, they lose. We can have policy debates. But to allege that our argument is fraud is an outright lie.”

Of course it is. As you can read in the Omaha World-Herald today, debate is not in the cards: “The key to defeating the initiative is to keep it off the ballot in the first place. That’s the only way we’re going to win,” said Donna Stern, Midwest director for the Detroit-based By Any Means Necessary.

Now, that’s what I call confidence in your position. And as Roger Clegg at The Corner notes: “The Left, as you know, favors democracy, power to the people, and nondiscrimination, except when it doesn’t.”

(Cross-posted on Post-Ed Notes.)