If you are a scientist that asserts global warming is an undisputed fact and then another scientist disagrees with you, what do you do?

You pick up your marbles and go home. You certainly don’t debate this issue in House testimony.

Article here.

Hat Tip: From the Heartland.

This is too depressing to even comment on. 

Washington state health officials will soon start asking detailed questions about the health of some state residents — and even give them brief physical exams.

The door-to-door survey of 1,100 randomly selected households across the state will try to learn more about our health, and especially about our risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, to better target preventive educational programs.

. . .  

The survey is being financed by an $800,000 grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kansas and Arkansas also were awarded survey grants.

Whole article here.

A recent law passed in Maryland that would have required Wal-Mart to have additional health-care benefits than smaller companies.

The state law would have required large employers to spend at least 8 percent of payroll on health care or pay the difference in taxes. Only Wal-Mart would have been affected by the law. 

This law was over-turned by a federal judge.

Singling out a specific company for legal sanctions appears to be illegal, as it should be. 

Whole article here.   

This article is important for at least three points. First it shows how over time public transit becomes increasingly unaffordable and require ever larger subsidies. Second how the system of diverting resources from intended purposes to “pork barrel” bring home the bacon works in Washington. And third, how public transit is really regressive, spending tax money for affluent citizens rather than the other way around as it is touted.

Representative Tom Davis (R-VA) is requesting the House of Representatives to consider an amendment (H.R. 3496, as revised) to the Deep Water Energy Resources Act (H.R. 4761) that would divert $1.5 billion of federal revenues earned through offshore drilling to subsidize the deeply troubled Metro transit system serving the nation’s capital and his congressional district. If enacted, this earmark would be one of the largest ever passed—seven times larger than Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere” and twice as large as Mississippi’s “Train to Nowhere.”

Full story here. 

This at Tech Central Station:

It turns out that, despite all the claims that ethanol is good for the environment, ethanol may be a net polluter in many ways. Ethanol does reduce carbon monoxide emissions because it is an “oxygenate,” which means it adds oxygen to the fuel, converting the CO into CO2, carbon dioxide. (Seeing how CO is not greenhouse gas, our ethanol policies result in making more CO2; what would Al Gore say?) But on the question of hydrocarbons, ethanol appears to make things worse.

Alcohol’s hydrogen bonds are weaker than those of water or even gasoline, making alcohol more likely to evaporate, both under high heat, and under normal temperatures. In scientific terms, this means ethanol and other alcohols have greater “volatility” than gasoline.