Blizzard Round

Same as a lightning round, but more weather appropriate. . . .

• One of the things we're supposedly going to miss when the MSM goes belly up is the objective reporting that its members provide. Take for example this measured analysis of Joe Lieberman on offer from the Washington Post: "Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) has once again inserted himself into the middle of an inflamed partisan debate, raising questions about his motives, his ego and his fickle allegiance to the Democratic Party, which forgave him after he supported Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for president." I hate it when a legislator gets involved in legislation, don't you?
• We have been assured that one of the benefits of ridding ourselves of Republican rule is that the Justice Department would cease being so politicized. Here's some evidence of that.
• I don't mind snow so much, but I just wish it wouldn't fall in my driveway or on 35W.
• Almost got through this without beating the drums on AGW again. Almost. I would like to commend to your attention this piece from Joel Kotkin that appears in Forbes. Lotsa good stuff, but here's one key observation about Barack Obama's "Science Advisor," one John Holdren:

The notion that the hoi polloi must be sacrificed to save the earth is not a new one. Paul Ehrlich, who was the mentor of President Obama's science advisor, John Holdren, laid out the defining logic in his 1968 best-seller, The Population Bomb. In this influential work, Ehrlich predicted mass starvation by the 1970s and "an age of scarcity" in key metals by the mid-1980s. Similar views were echoed by a 1972 "Limits to Growth" report issued by the Club of Rome, a global confab that enjoyed a cache similar to that of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

To deal with this looming crisis, Holdren in the 1977 book Ecoscience (co-authored with Anne and Paul Ehrlich) developed the notion of "de-development." According to Holdren, poorer countries like India and China could not be expected to work their way out of poverty since they were "foredoomed by enormous if not insurmountable economic and environmental obstacles." The only way to close "the prosperity gap" was to lower the living standards of what he labeled "over-developed" nations.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Ehrlich and Holdren don't have a great track record for predicting the future. They'd not last a minute at a Vegas sports book. So remind me again, why ought we be listening to them now?