Are Wildland Fires Fueling The Greenhouse?

Wildland fires are taking tons of carbon out of storage and feeding it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, as reported by Science Daily. This is the preliminary result of a study from the National Center For Atmospheric Research: massive forest fires may be contributing to global warming.

—by Peter Sheerin at 5:08 PM {PermaLink}

Big Brother eyes taxes by the mile

Oregon wants to collect gas taxes by the mile using GPS receivers in each car, to make up for the coming of more fuel-efficient cars. Can you imagine how silent the ACLU will be when the California Democrats propose this? (From WorldNetDaily.)

—by Peter Sheerin at 3:40 PM {PermaLink}

America is being invaded

Joseph Farah writes on WorldNetDaily about the problems the thousands of daily illegal immigrants cause for our country.

—by Peter Sheerin at 3:37 PM {PermaLink}

CA Coastal Commission ruled illegal

In what may turn out to be a major victory for property rights and making the government follow the constitution, today’s SF Chronicle reports, “Coastal Commission ruled illegal”.

As the court put it, the “agency violates ‘separation of powers’ ”.

—by Peter Sheerin at 3:00 PM {PermaLink}

Double standard on civil rights

I just saw a TV segment (KRON-TV) on new Calif. laws for the new year. One of them caught my eye—law enforcement agencies will now be able to get roving wiretaps. We’ve all heard Democrats complaining loudly when the Bush administration proposed this at the Federal level, but why did I not hear a peep from any of the Democrats or Calif. newspapers when the all-Democratic California legislature and govenor decided to make this law?

—by Peter Sheerin at 11:57 AM {PermaLink}

How to Ruin American Enterprise

In the December 23 issue of Forbes Magazine, Ben Stein asks, We’re well on our way to squelching what gives this country an edge. What would it take to kill innovation altogether?—and then describes 12 ways to accomplish that goal. That all of these are being done should be a wake-up call to American citizens.

—by Peter Sheerin at 11:31 AM {PermaLink}

Nuclear regulators back full-scale cask testing

From the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Full-scale tests of nuclear waste shipping casks would build the public's confidence in the Yucca Mountain Project even though less expensive computer modeling can gain results just as well, the government's chief nuclear regulators said Wednesday.”

The gist of the article is that the tests already done on scale models are believed to be accurate, but doing full-scale tests will be expensive ($1 million per cask) and not yeild as much data as the earlier tests.

—by Peter Sheerin at 2:24 PM {PermaLink}