U.N. Summit Will Push for a More Powerful Global Environmental Agency

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(CNSNews.com) – Ahead of a mammoth United Nations sustainability conference in Rio de Janeiro next month, the Brazilian government has signaled a new push to get the U.N.’s top environmental body upgraded – a push long opposed by the United States.
Brazil wants to breathe new life into an initiative — vigorously promoted since the 1990s by European leaders — to replace the 40 year-old U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) with a full-fledged “specialized agency,” dubbed the U.N. Environment Organization (UNEO).

Brazilian Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira told a press briefing last Friday that the issue was a priority for her government, but she acknowledged that “there is no consensus in international organizations on the proposal to create an environment agency” during the summit, known as Rio+20.

“We are working hard looking for the best way to achieve this,” she said.

In what the U.N.’s Division for Sustainable Development says will be the biggest conference ever organized by the U.N., around 50,000 people, including some 135 heads of state and government (or deputies) will take part in the June 20-22 event.

Read More at cnsnews.com. By Patrick Goodenough.

Bill Clinton’s glamorous fundraiser called “worst party ever” by angry guests

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Attendees complained the underground venue “stank”, with perspiration “dripping off the walls” and the rooms too crowded to even see the former president.

One, who called it the “worst party ever” described how “angry people” were waiting in the queue outside while high-profile guests were admitted, and another condemned the event as “unpleasant”.

The evening had been intended as a fundraising event for the Clinton Foundation Millennium Network, which was set up to “encourage the next generation to address global challenges”.

Hosted by Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea, the night was attended by actress Gwyneth Paltrow, model Lily Cole, performer Will.I.Am and Princess Beatrice.

Glamorous photographs of the event document Clinton’s short speech addressing the issue of climate change, as well smartly-dressed attendees enjoying themselves.

Read More at telegraph.co.uk. By Hannah Furness.

Rep. King slams White House for sharing bin Laden secrets with Hollywood

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The White House has apparently undermined the secrecy that protects U.S. anti-jihadi operations because it wants to aid Hollywood’s quick production of a movie about the killing of Osama bin Laden, according to a statement from Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

E-mails released May 22 show “a damning story of extremely close, unprecedented, and potentially dangerous collaboration with top officials at the CIA, the [Department of Defense] and the White House and a top Democratic lobbying firm,” King said.

King is pressing administration officials to explain their unprecedented cooperation with producer Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, whose movie, titled “Zero Dark Thirty,” is slated for release later this year.

Bigelow and Boal apparently used a Democratic lobbying firm, the Glover Park Group, to help them get access to officials and soldiers involved in the successful killing.

“Is it CIA practice to meet with registered lobbyists in order to facilitate access to National Clandestine Service personnel?… Were [CIA spies] introduced to Boal and Bigelow over the objections of the Director of the [CIA counterterrorism center], who apparently declined to meet with the filmmakers?” King asked in a May 23 letter sent to Michael Morell, deputy director of the CIA.

Read More at the Daily Caller. By Neil Munro.

Ex-ABC Head Westin Denies Liberal Bias, Rationalizes Greater Media Focus on Romney’s Wealth

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Appearing as a guest on Tuesday’s The O’Reilly Factor to promote his book, Exit Interview, former ABC News president David Westin denied seeing a liberal bias among his colleagues when he was head of ABC News, and, when confronted by a recent study by the MRC’s Business and Media Institute, rationalized the greater attention the media have paid to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s wealth this year as opposed to Democratic nominee John Kerry’s wealth in 2004.

Host Bill O’Reilly began by recounting the recent MRC study documenting the imbalance in media treatment of Kerry versus Romney, giving Westin – who was head of ABC News in 2004 but has since retired – a chance to respond. Westin argued that the economy is a bigger issue this year than it was in 2004:

And my recollection in 2004 is the big issue the country was facing was the war. It was Iraq. That’s what everybody was talking about. And interestingly – you remember this well – what happened during that election was really they turned around Kerry’s war record with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth – I talk about this in the book – and made it all sort of a referendum on his claim to be a hero.

He soon added:

I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have – they shouldn’t cover this less than they are. I’m not trying to defend that, Bill. But what I am saying is right now I think many Americans are worried about their economic situation. They’re worried about their jobs, their houses, their children, their 401(k)s, things like that. That was not true in 2004.

He ended up suggesting that the media had followed an example supposedly set by the Bush campaign to make Kerry’s war record an issue, and that the media are currently following a similar lead from the Obama campaign’s attempts to make Romney’s wealth an issue. Westin:

It’s also driven by the opponent. I mean, the Obama campaign is pushing this story very, very hard. Bush was pushing the “let’s challenge Kerry’s war record hard, too.”

But Westin’s analysis ignored the fact that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth – rather than the Bush campaign – were mostly ignored when the right-leaning group emerged in May 2004 until August when Kerry himself started attacking the group because their ad campaign challenging his Vietnam War record was hurting his poll numbers. The media came to Kerry’s defense by trying to undermine the anti-Kerry Swift Boat group.

Read More at Media Research Center. By Brad Wilmouth.

Photo credit: davelawrence8 (Creative Commons)

Obama Meets the French Version of Himself

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It could be said that a narcissist’s best friend is the reflection he sees of himself in the mirror. No other relationship comes close — unless the narcissist has the unique opportunity to meet another version of himself, which happened last week during the recent Group of Eight (G-8) summit at Camp David.

“President Obama, this is new French president Francois Hollande. President Hollande, c’est le president americain Barack Obama.” “Tweedledum, meet Tweedledee.”

If, as they say, a picture paints a thousand words, then it is obvious it was amour at first sight for Obama and Hollande — ahem — as compared to snapshots taken of Obama with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Obama’s body language expressed he’d be more comfortable sitting next to a rattlesnake.

It isn’t every day an American president hits it off so jovially with a staunch socialist leader, but these are strange days we are living in. Ignoring the obvious is supposed to be the norm.

Obama and Hollande share much in common, including the way each coasted to victory riding on the winds of social unrest and economic uncertainty while using slogans promising change. Obama used “Hope and Change” and Hollande, “Change is now.” Does it actually matter? Not really. Except for the fact that both cases show us how people are willing to compromise core beliefs when times get tough.

Read More at Western Journalism. By Susan Stamper Brown.

Sowell: A Book for Republicans

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Democrats have been having a field day with the cry of “tax cuts for the rich” — for which Republicans seem to have no reply. This is especially surprising, because Democrats made the same arguments back in the 1920s, and the Republicans then not only had a reply, but one that eventually carried the day, when the top tax rate was brought down from 73 percent to 24 percent.

What was the difference then?

The biggest difference is that Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon took the trouble to articulate the case for lower tax rates, in articles that appeared in popular publications, using plain language that ordinary people could understand. Seldom do Republican leaders today even attempt to do any such thing.

In 1924, the ideas from these articles were collected in a book which Mellon titled “Taxation: The People’s Business.” That book has recently been reprinted by the University of Minnesota Law Library. Today’s Republicans would do well to get a copy of Mellon’s book, which shows how demagoguery about “tax cuts for the rich” can be exposed for the nonsense that it is.

People in the media could also benefit by seeing how the “tax cuts for the rich” demagoguery collapses like a house of cards when you subject it to logic and evidence.

Read More at gopusa. By Thomas Sowell.

Mitt’s Mistake

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“The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership–in the White House and in Congress — for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us.” — Ronald Reagan accepting the Republican presidential nomination, July 1980

“He had just one strategy — attack, attack, attack, carry the fight to the enemy’s camp.” — Historian David McCullough on Harry Truman’s upset 1948 win over Thomas E. Dewey

Why is Barack Obama’s life just like Ronald Reagan’s when it comes to the presidency?

What if Barack Obama had spent 20 years with the black Thomas Sowell as his mentor — instead of the black Jeremiah Wright?

Who died and left liberals in charge of defining the rules of acceptability in the 2012 campaign?

Read More at The American Spectator. By Jeffrey Lord.

Photo Credit : Gage Skidmore (Creative Commons)

What if Zimmerman Walks Free?

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Three months ago, George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla., shot and killed Trayvon Martin.

Handcuffed, taken in and interrogated, Zimmerman told police Trayvon had been acting suspiciously that dark and rainy night, that he had followed Trayvon, been knocked down and battered on the ground, and, fearing for his life, pulled a concealed handgun and shot him.

Sanford police and prosecutors concluded that Zimmerman acted in self-defense and had not committed a provable felony. They let him go.

A racial firestorm followed. “Blacks are under attack,” railed Jesse Jackson. “Killing us is big business.” Arriving in Sanford, the reverend dialed it up. Trayvon was “shot down in cold blood by a vigilante … murdered and martyred.”

Rep. Maxine Waters’ charge of “hate crime” was echoed by radio talker Joe Madison. Rep. Hank Johnson said Trayvon had been “executed.” The Grio compared his killing to the lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955.

Read More at takimag.com. By Patrick J. Buchanan.

The Church Goes To Court

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Congratulations are in order for the Catholic Church, whose archdioceses in America went to federal court today to challenge the Obama administration on the contraception mandates. Something like a dozen federal lawsuits were filed against the administration by something on the order of 43 plaintiffs, including the Archdiocese of New York, among others, and the crown jewel in Catholic education in America, Notre Dame.* It seems the liberal institutions within the Catholic world have come together with the conservative ones to stand up for the rights of religious Catholics — and by extension, the rest of us — to be free of government mandates in respect of their religion.

We liked the way the issue was framed in the brief for the Archdiocese of New York, which opened by noting what the lawsuit is not about as well as what it is about. It is, the brief said, “not about whether people have a right to abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception. Those services are freely available in the United States, and nothing prevents the Government itself from making them more widely available.” It went on to complain that the government nonetheless “seeks to require Plaintiffs — all Catholic entities — to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs by providing, paying for, and/or facilitating access to those products and services.”

The church seeks shelter under both the Constitution, which prohibits Congress from making any law prohibiting the free exercise of religion, and a statute, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. RFRA was passed in 1993 — by an overwhelming voice vote in the House and a 97 to three vote in the Senate — with the aim of protecting free exercise. It requires strict scrutiny of laws, and prohibits the government from substantially burdening “a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.” The law is one of the important civil rights measures of the modern era.

Read More at The New York Sun.

If Obama is ousted in November, thank Florida Governor Scott

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As the State of Florida continues to release evidence in the Trayvon Martin case, it becomes increasingly clear that prosecutors will have little chance of convincing an honest jury that George Zimmerman is guilty of 2nd degree murder.

On May 15th, a medical report submitted by Zimmerman’s family doctor revealed that, on the night of the shooting the accused murderer suffered “…a ‘closed fracture’ of [the] nose, a pair of black eyes, two lacerations to the back of [the] head and a minor back injury…”  Zimmerman was treated by police at the scene and sought medical attention the next morning. (1)

Yet none of this information was included in the Affidavit of Probable Cause submitted by State Attorney Angela Corey as grounds for her charge of 2nd degree murder. Neither was the fact that witnesses testified to State investigators that Martin had attacked Zimmerman, or that he knocked Zimmerman to the ground, jumped on top of him and drove his head into the sidewalk as Zimmerman cried for help. The remarkably one-sided Affidavit simply states, “Zimmerman confronted Martin and a struggle ensued.” (2)

Alan Dershowitz states Corey “…has a terrible reputation in Florida for always overcharging…”  In fact it’s Dershowitz’s contention that Corey was specifically chosen by Florida Governor Rick Scott to “…stop race riots.”  Norm Wolfinger, the original prosecutor in the Martin case, intended to present all the known facts of the shooting to a grand jury. Had the exculpatory evidence now known to support Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense persuaded that body to bring no charge, Florida blacks would have almost certainly responded with state wide rioting. No doubt, many other portions of the United States would have joined in. (3)

In replacing Wolfinger with the “hang-em-high” Angela Corey, Governor Scott was playing to professional race baiters and media sycophants around the nation. And the unsuspecting Corey played her role of avenging angel to the hilt, stating at a nationally televised press conference that she had promised “…those sweet parents [of Trayvon] we would get answers to all of their questions…” and “seek justice for Trayvon…” (4)

Read More at Western Journalism. By Doug Book.