Stones Cry Out

Another Middle East dictator long-time ruler is stepping down.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh says he will not seek another term after three decades in power. This comes as violence and protests continue in Egypt, even after the country’s President Mubarak announced that he himself will step down before September’s elections.

Depending on who fills all these power vacuums, this could be really good or really bad. For those of us who believe end-times prophesies about Israel, we’re watching closely.

Skin cells turned directly into heart cells.

Scientists have successfully converted adult skin cells directly into beating heart cells efficiently without having to first go through the laborious process of generating embryonic-like stem cells.

The powerful general technology platform could lead to novel treatments for diseases and injuries involving cell loss or damage such as heart disease, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s disease, according to researchers at the Scripps Research Institute.

In 2006, Japanese scientists reported that they could reprogram mouse skin cells to become pluripotent simply by inserting a set of four genes into the cells dubbed induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. But creating iPS cells itself is a time taking procedure.

Hence, lead author Sheng Ding and colleagues tweaked the process by completely bypassing the iPS stage and going directly from one type of mature cell (a skin cell) to another (a heart cell).

Amazing. This is almost the biological equivalent of alchemy.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg evidently feels the need to patrol outside his jurisdiction, not only leaving the confines of NYC limits, but outside his home state. Not content with snooping around his northeast locale, he’s ventured to the American Southwest, taking on Arizona.

From CNN, Undercover investigators buy guns without background checks,

Undercover investigators purchased semiautomatic weapons at an Arizona gun show, despite telling vendors that they probably could not pass background checks, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters Monday.

“We have demonstrated how easy it is for anyone to buy a semiautomatic handgun and a high capacity magazine, no questions asked,” Bloomberg said.

One has to wonder what Arizona law enforcement thinks about New York City investigators conducting sting operations in Arizona?

Perhaps Arizona Governor Jan Brewer should organize sting operations to find out how easy it is for a New York State Attorney General and Governor to be linked to a prostitution ring, or for a physician (in neighboring Philadelphia) to kill unborn children, or… how easy is it to take down a couple of skyscrapers?

Better yet, why doesn’t Bloomberg just mind his own business in his own jurisdiction?

Good morning.

1. Talking about abortion, alas starting with the regrettable Jarvis thing.
2. Antisemitism (or not) of one of the three great church Fathers.
3. Talking about Vinson. So is inactivity a commercial act? Are there any conceivable limits to Constitutional authority in the liberal view?
4. And an application of inactivity and the law.
5. And on that topic, Mr Obama’s campaign rhetoric returning to bite him.
6. Are those the two legal alternatives, of which Mr Obama is not to follow choosing either?
7. A water/land switch.
8. Holding one’s heart aflame.
9. America’s poor in context.
10. Snow meets Plato.
11. To counter the “snow a result of global warming nonsense.” 
12. Payoffs and transparency.
13. Multipliers and crowding.
14. Humor meets the pizza.
15. Meta-conceptual notions.
16. Heh.

When George W. Bush went into Afghanistan and Iraq, the Left predicted that the "Arab street" would erupt in protest against America. Other than the timing, under which US President, and the reason they would protest, they got it absolutely correct. >grin<

In Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan, the "Arab street" is indeed flooding the streets in protest, but years after the Left predicted it, and against their own governments. The Jordanian government has been dissolved, and it’s not at all sure that Egypt’s Mubarek will survive this uprising.

And what needs to change? King Abdullah II of Jordan put it this way.

The king also stressed that economic reform was a "necessity to provide a better life for our people, but we won’t be able to attain that without real political reforms, which must increase popular participation in the decision-making."

More democracy. Turns out, the Arab street wants to be more like America. Or even (heh) Israel. The human rights records of all these countries are pretty bad as well.

Part of this depends on who fills the leadership void, especially in Egypt. If it is radical Muslims, this could turn into another Iran. But that is not a foregone conclusion, so let’s pray for the best for the Arab people.

Good morning.

1. Repair work in house and self.
2. Irony alert.
3. Culture wars.
4. One way in which Mr Obama can truly be thought really really smart (or why he selected Mr Biden as running mate?).
5. Some aphorisms: here and here.
6. Coptic links.
7. The judge makes a ruling.
8. Yah think?
9. Artwork, oil on canvas I think.
10. A child is ill.

It’s just the latest ruling, and other courts have agreed and disagreed, but the lawsuit of 26 states against it has had a major ruling in its favor.

The ruling favors of the 26 state attorney generals challenging the law. The judge ruled the individual mandate that requires all Americans to purchase health insurance invalid and, according to the decision, "because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void."

In case you missed the media coverage of it (and it would be hard to catch it, frankly) here’s a time lapse video of it. Ninety minutes collapsed down to 60 seconds.

The new international leader of The Salvation Army (aka "The General") is Commissioner Linda Bond of Canada. She’s actually the General-elect, as she’ll take the post after the current General retires in April. Commissioner Bond is the third woman to hold this position after Evangeline Booth (1934-1939) and Eva Burrows (1986-1993).

Good morning.

1. When Mr Bush was President and today little policy change, big change however in the volume of criticism. Hmmm, and that’s likely one example among many.
2. Climate. And some words on the snowy winter we’re having.
3. Yet another elephant in the room, which is not unlike the childhood obesity elephant.
4. What? He’s going to just fold? Riiiight.
5. Coptic images.
6. Democracy and the kayak.
7. Communications and self-censorship.
8. Cutting to the heart of the problem with liberal notions of the welfare state, “A movement whose main promise is the relief from responsibility cannot but be antimoral in its effect, however lofty the ideals to which it owes its birth.”
9. A failure of imagination. So many times “if X then Y” does not follow. Liberal multiculturalism likes to tout the notion that there are many ways to think about things … except apparently when they argue.
10. Measuring an uprising.
11. Fun with maths.
12. What normally doesn’t happen when you fall 1,000 feet off a sheer cliff.
13. Bully in transit, and I think it helped that the person assisting with the bully was taller.
14. Well, at least political rhetoric laced with military images  haven’t (yet) been blamed.

School officer shooting – a hoax
Oh, this is just icing on the cake for homeschoolers. Remember the school officer shooting that resulted in a pee-deprived 5 hour LOCKDOWN, for up to 9 schools, in a 7 square mile area? Well it appears that the “shooting” was orchestrated by the officer who was “shot”.

Keep incidents like this in mind whenever someone advocates that ordinary citizens should have sensible gun-control laws foisted on them, because we can only trust those who have been trained to be responsible with firearms. Incidents like these do not indicate that all law enforcement is bad, but merely that they are human.

If you think parents were peeved before…

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It was green in every way – except that of money
Huntington Beach’s [California] first ‘green’ home is seized by bank.

The first ‘green’ home in Huntington Beach, debuting to much fanfare a little more than a year ago before having its asking price chopped dramatically and becoming a short sale, has gone back to the bank.

You’d think someone like… Robert Redford, might have cared enough to pick it up.

I suppose that some enviros have yet to understand the concept of free market economics.

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Green in name, but not in deed? Must be due to Big Oil Greed?
And in the same Huntington Beach, we have a middle school protest over the installation of solar panels on school property. Why? Because said panels will be installed by – shudder! – Chevron.

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Hey, Wally?
For some lighter Huntington Beach news, it seems that The Beaver just got married in the H.B.

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A common sense lib
From the Huffington Post,

As a liberal Democrat, I worry about the damage we might do by rushing toward a fresh raft of gun-control laws. It’s very hard to demonstrate that most of them — registration, waiting periods, one-gun-a-month laws, closing the gun-show loophole, large-capacity-magazine restrictions, assault-rifle bans — have ever saved a life. It’s a hard thing to accept, but in a country of 350 million privately owned guns, the people who are inclined to do bad things with guns will always be able to get them. One might as well combat air crashes by repealing gravity.

If you didn’t hear anything, or very little, about thousands who attended the March for Life last weekend in DC, that’s understandable. The media routinely ignores it.

And speaking of a liberal media, Jay Carney, who used to write for Time magazine, is now Obama’s new press secretary. His new job description — putting Obama in the most positive light possible — is very much like his old job description.

And still speaking of a liberal media, they’re getting rather disappointed that Obama is not doing what he said he would. Well, they’ve just joined those of us who have been paying attention for 2 years.

Headline from USA Today: “When unwed births hit 41%, it’s just not right”. But it’s OK at 40%? Seriously though, look at the graph showing how fast the out-of-wedlock births have jumped since the notorious “Sexual Revolution” of the 1960s.

Civil Discourse Watch:

“They’re going to hang themselves,” said Belknap [New Hampshire] Democratic Chair Ed Allard of Republicans. “And we’re going to help them.”

Allard’s threat came during a meeting of despondent Democrats in Belknap County on Thursday evening. The meeting was hosted by President Obama’s Organizing for America.

The IPCC said that the glaciers in the Karakoram mountain range would be gone by 2035 due to climate change. The latest word? “Researchers have discovered that contrary to popular belief half of the ice flows in the Karakoram range of the mountains are actually growing rather than shrinking.” Um, who’s popular belief are they talking about?

And finally, a shorter version of the State of the Union speech, from Rick McKee:

Good morning.

1. For the open borders crowd.
2. The Constitution a continuing series.
3. Envy? Really!?
4. Fundamentalism.
5. Fan/Fred.
6. Some local NJ history.
7. Belief and unbelief in Russia.
8. A US map.
9. Rahm and Chicago. Somewhere I read that almost all of Rahm’s financial backing for this run, which exceeds by far that of his opponents, comes from big Wall Street banks. Awareness of the cognitive dissonance on the part of the party of the people seems to be missing.
10. Silence in the left wing echo chamber.
11. Hitting some of my pet peeves regarding the Holocaust.
12. Stupid cop tricks in the land of liberals.

That was then.

In Virginia, the weather also has changed dramatically. Recently arrived residents in the northern suburbs, accustomed to today’s anemic winters, might find it astonishing to learn that there were once ski runs on Ballantrae Hill in McLean, with a rope tow and local ski club. Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled. But neighbors came to our home at Hickory Hill nearly every winter weekend to ride saucers and Flexible Flyers.

That was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in 2008.  This is now.

New York City and Newark, N.J., picked up a whopping 19 inches snow. For the month, both cities now have piled on 36-38 inches, making January 2011 the snowiest January on record! Bridgeport, Conn., Islip, N.Y. and New York-La Guardia airport have also now seen their snowiest Januaries.

Congratulations to both the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Ski Areas Association for making a difference. In 2003 the environmental outfit and the trade group teamed up on a campaign called Keep Winter Cool, aimed at "highlighting the impact of global warming on winter recreation and the opportunities both resort operators and their guests have to start solving the problem." They liked the snow and wanted to keep it, but global warming was threatening to turn off the spigots and dry up the slopes. “We can fix the problem”, they said, “as long as we start soon.“

Well, they fixed it. Eight winters later, as Time magazine and the New York Times have reported, global warming is making the weather colder and snowier than ever. Good job, fellas! The Keep Winter Cool campaign seems to have decided to rest on its laurels and call its effort a success; its last press release is dated April 2007. But we thought we should highlight the good work of the NRDC and the NSAA, who were combating global warming before global warming was literally cool.

(Hat tip: James Taranto)

From National Review:

Reuters is reporting that the ancient Cairo-based Sunni center of learning al-Azhar has broken off dialogue with the Vatican after Pope Benedict expressed objections to church massacres in Iraq and Egypt and “urged Christian communities to persevere in a non-violent manner in the face of what he described as ‘a strategy of violence that has Christians as a target.’”

Al-Azhar issued a statement with the following explanation: “[Al-Azhar’s] Islamic Research Council reviewed in an emergency meeting Thursday the repeatedly insulting remarks issued by the Vatican Pope toward Islam and his statement that Muslims are discriminating against others who live with them in the Middle East. . . . The council decided to freeze dialogue between al-Azhar and the Vatican for an indefinite period.”

Because nothing it more insulting that urging people to be non-violent, and pointing out that, indeed, Christian are indeed being persecuted.