The hottest new trend in climate change may be global cooling, some researchers say.

Contrary to the commonly held scientific conclusion that the Earth is getting warmer, Dr. Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University and author of more than 150 peer-reviewed papers, has unveiled evidence for his prediction that global cooling is coming soon.

"A sign of global cooling? This past “decade set a record for largest average global snow extent,” Taylor said."

Easterbrook spoke before a group of about 700 scientists and government officials at the fourth International Conference on Climate Change. The conference is presented annually in Chicago by the Heartland Institute, a conservative nonprofit think tank that actively questions the theory of man's role in global warming. Last year the Institute published Climate Change Reconsidered, a comprehensive reply to the United Nations' latest report on climate change.

His study, which has not been peer reviewed, is illustrated with photographs of weather stations in locations where their readings are distorted by heat-generating equipment."

"Has not been peer reviewed."

We now know, of course, that the satellite data set confirms that the climate is warming , and indeed at very nearly the same rate as indicated by the surface temperature records. Now, there's nothing wrong with making mistakes when pursuing an innovative observational method, but Spencer and Christy sat by for most of a decade allowing - indeed encouraging - the use of their data set as an icon for global warming skeptics. They committed serial errors in the data analysis, but insisted they were right and models and thermometers were wrong. They did little or nothing to root out possible sources of errors, and left it to others to clean up the mess, as has now been done.

The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants the flyswatter in chief to try taking a more humane attitude the next time he's bedeviled by a fly in the White House.

PETA is sending President Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.

"We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals," PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday. "We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals."

President Obama killed a fly! President Obama killed a fly! "The poise! The cupping!" Swoon. Drool. Faint:

But as Liz Cox Barrett at the Columbia Journalism Review points out, with all of the glee over a dead insect, media outlets, including the one that actually conducted the interview, haven't bothered to report on what the President had to say. So in case you were interested, besides displaying his "Jedi moves," Obama also discussed regulatory reform proposals, health care, Iran, and he slammed Fox News:

Pres. OBAMA: First of all, I've got one television station entirely devoted to attacking my administration. I mean, you know, that's a pretty...

HARWOOD: I assume you're talking about Fox.

Pres. OBAMA: Well, that's a pretty big megaphone. And you'd be hard-pressed, if you watched the entire day, to find a positive story about me on that front.

Mr. Leach said he and Mr. Roeder had met once, and Mr. Roeder had described similar views to his own. Of Dr. Tiller's death, Mr. Leach said, "To call this a crime is too simplistic," adding, "There is Christian scripture that would support this."

The man being questioned in connection with the investigation is Scott Roader, 51, of Merriam, Kan. [...] Neighbors said they've seen a similar car at the house in Merriam. They describe the ongoings at the house as strange. They said it's a revolving door of men coming and staying there and describe what appear to be religious gatherings.

As someone who has always called what the Jihadists do terrorism, could I get a response from Malkin as to whether she believes this Christianist murder is terrorism as well? Imagine an Islamist fanatic had assassinated a pro-Israel rabbi in a synagogue, and had harassed synagogues for years, including one arrest for bomb materials in his car. Imagine if one of his associates had tried to kill the rabbi before. Would there be any question that this was Islamist terror? So why is this not Christianist terror?

Randall Terry, Founder of Operation Rescue, will hold a press conference to discuss how the pro-life movement should deal with Dr. Tiller's death...

Mr. Terry states: "We must not fear, we must not flinch, we must not retreat a single inch. George Tiller was a mass murderer, and we must continue to say so in his death just as we did in his life.

Terry said he was now concerned that the Obama administration "will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions.

# Crap, I always forgot hashtags. I'm happy Tiller's dead. - Jennifer Waite, Selah, Washington
# UPDATE... Doctor George Tiller was aborted today in his 204th trimester - aren't paybacks a bitch - Punch
# oh HAPPY DAY! Tiller the baby killer is DEAD! - Samantha Pelch
# George Tiller the baby killer was shot dead this morning. God bless the gunmen who hopefully won't be caught. - readnwatchchris, Creedmor. NC
# was George Tiller the baby killers brain scrambled the way he scrambled full term fetuses.. one can only hope - Brad S
# Infamous baby killer George Tiller gunned down at (irony) church. Why do I not feel sorry for him? Have fun at Judgment Day. - James Fiddler
# tiller the baby killer shot dead...wow. is it insensitive of me to say what goes around comes around? - Brad M. Negulescu Cleveland.
# George Tiller the Baby Killer shot dead. May he rot in Hell. - Amy Strong
# Tiller Baby Killer was shot and killed this morning Justice has been served. - Shirl Ledeux
# Thinking about "Tiller the baby killer" He now knows the wages of sin is death. - Dianne McDowell
# May Tiller rot in Hell , infanticide is the murder of babies, he WAS a provider of death like Hitler, Bundy the list goes on.... - Dennis, A People Voip Company
# Burn in hell George Tiller - mikedanben Sparta, NJ (41.005501,-74.672)
# No need to pray for George Tiller. We know he went straight to hell!!!!! - Laurie D. Bailey Olive Branch, MS
# Good ridence to Tiller - babies will not be murdered because he is now gone. Wonder how he likes hell! - Jay Emess, Southern, NJ
# Karma is a beautiful thing. Cheers to the hero who sent George Tiller where he belongs... straight to hell. - Matthew Kamar

"Incapable of understanding" the economic crisis.

That's how Barack Obama and his presidential campaign team described John McCain last year when the Republican candidate famously said "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."

But now President Obama and his advisers are adopting similar rhetoric as they try to build public confidence in an economic turnaround.

"But the clip of Biden seemingly making a recent remark about the strength of the economy is grossly inaccurate. The Biden statement was actually from last September - during the presidential campaign - when he was quoting Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Here's what Biden really said:

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that's why John McCain could say with a straight face as recently as this morning and this is a quote, "the fundamentals of the economy are strong." That's what John said. He says that "We've made great progress economically in the Bush years."

But over the last half-year, the media and politicians have said we were in a recession even while the economy was still growing.

Gas prices are going up. The economy is slowing. Talk of recession is seemingly everywhere. While the majority of people rate their personal finances positively, consumer confidence in the economy has plunged to a 16-year low, well below what it was during the last year of the Clinton administration when we were in a recession.

Last week, Barack Obama proclaimed "As most experts know, our economy is in a recession." Hillary Clinton made similar staements last fall. Yet, as any economist knows, a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, and we haven't even had one single quarter of negative growth reported. The economy slowed down significantly during the end of last year, but that was after a sizzling annual GDP growth rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter.

The NBER does not define a recession in terms of two consecutive quarters of decline in real GDP. Rather, a recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. For more information, see the latest announcement on how the NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee chooses turning points in the Economy and its latest memo, dated 07/17/03.

BOSTON - A suspicious package alert that shut down downtown Boston Wednesday afternoon was actually part of an elaborate marketing campaign by the Cartoon Network to spark interest in its "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" show.

Why is the "Easter bunny" under attack? You won't believe what some malls in Florida have planned less than two weeks before one of biggest day's on the Christian calendar.

SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: You know something, David? Look, where is the tolerance on the left anymore? I mean, this is the Easter Bunny. This is about Bob's kids and my kids going to the mall. Are you really going to be hurt, are you really going to be offended by a mall identifying a bunny as the Easter Bunny? Is your faith shaken that deeply?

SILVERMAN: On a scale of one to ten, we're talking about a two. But on a scale of one to ten, the actual act of calling it something more neutral is nice to see. You know, it's nicer to see.

HANNITY: Should we remove the name of Jesus Christ from the public square totally?

SILVERMAN: We're talking about the Easter Bunny.

HANNITY: Take "In God We Trust" off U.S. coins, right? "One nation under God" out of the Pledge. We go back to the Declaration of Independence and say, "Endowed by our creator," out, too?

SILVERMAN: Absolutely not. We're talking about malls that are allowed to call the Easter Bunny anything they want.

The rabbit is well known as a sexual symbol of fertility. In various parts of the world, religions which developed from Babel also associate the rabbit with periodicity, both human and lunar (Egypt, China, etc.). As you may remember, the Mother Goddess Semiramis (Easter) is associated with the Moon. In other words, the Easter bunny symbolizes the Mother Goddess. Annual Spring time fertility rituals are associated worship of the Mother Goddess and Tammuz, the reincarnation of her husband Nimrod.

Rush concludes by saying, "But I bet this is happening all over the country: the banning of the Easter bunny and Easter eggs and this sort of thing." And if it is, it's undoubtedly the fault of the ACLU, Ward Churchill, and Hillary Clinton.

COLMES: How did a guy like Jeff Gannon, Jim Guckert, get in there? How did that happen? As I understand it, you wouldn't take his questions for a week, is that right?

FLEISCHER: For one week, that's correct. This is a real tough one, because the problem you have got is who in the government should decides who is a reporter and who isn't? What standards do you use to make those decisions?

In the history of the White House - it's a long history - has been relatively inclusive, more so than the Senate and the House press galleries. And it's led to some colorful characters left and right...

COLMES: But it's not easy to get a day pass. He gets these daily passes. How does this happen? Isn't somebody on the inside giving this guy a pass?

FLEISCHER: Oh, sure. He couldn't have gotten in if he didn't have a pass.

COLMES: Knowing he would ask softball questions of the president, right?

FLEISCHER: Well, you know, he asked conservative questions. I don't know I would say those are softball...

COLMES: Oh, come on. You know some of the questions...

FLEISCHER: Does that mean the liberals in the room asked softball questions to Bill Clinton.... who asked softball questions to Bill Clinton?

COLMES: I don't know. To that extent, did they?

FLEISCHER: I think reporters' jobs are to ask tough questions. And if you get a question that matches what you believe, that doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong with that.

COLMES: All right. But is there a security problem when someone like that gets in there, no one knows how he gets in, no one takes responsibility, using a phony name?

FLEISCHER: There was never a security issue. He had to go through the same metal detectors as everybody else and be searched just like everybody else. That was never a concern or an issue.

I think the tough part is, in this day of bloggers and computers and Internet, how do you define who is a reporter anymore? And even the White House Correspondents Association (search), which represents White House reporters, refused to take a position or a stand because they recognize, who can make this division and who else should be thrown out of that room?

Deeply conservative and anti-American, Fallujah has a population of some 200,000, all of whom are members of Islam's mainstream Sunni Muslim sect. Some subscribe to radical interpretations of Islam, finding behavior by American troops like raiding homes and detaining men in front of wives and children as deeply offensive.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Usama bin Laden do two things. The first is you really have to get the intelligence agencies better organized to deal with the terrorist threat to the United States itself. One of the problems that we have is a kind of split responsibility, of course, between the CIA and foreign intelligence and the FBI and domestic intelligence.

There needs to be better cooperation because we don't want to wake up one day and find out that Usama bin Laden has been successful on our own territory.

This transcript that Fox has released is a background briefing. We've all given background briefings to the press, and I think we should all be weary from now on when we give them. I think they should be ashamed of themselves for releasing this. They should say "sometimes fair and balanced" after today.
*applause*

Your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. I failed you. We tried hard, but we failed you...I ask for your understanding, and your forgiveness.

The "universally agreed tenets of Islam" is a hell of an improvment compared to "Islam". Not much is universially agreed in any religion, so that sentence will be unlikely to mean much.
I have to remind you that the Norwegian constitution says:

"The Evangelical-Lutheran religion shall remain the official religion of the State. The inhabitants professing it are bound to bring up their children in the same."

Yet Norway is one of the most secular states in the world.