Rules Waived: Border Fence To Be Completed By Year’s End

"Criminal activity at the border does not stop for endless debate or protracted litigation," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a statement. "These waivers will enable important security projects to keep moving forward."

Whoever thought it would?

There was a clause in the original border fence law that allowed the President to order the fence and bypass all law suits, looks like Bush may have just read this clause. As of March 17, there were 309 miles of fencing in place, leaving about 361 to be completed by the end of 2008 to meet the Homeland Security department's goal. Of those remaining miles, 267 miles are now being held up by federal, state and local laws and regulations.

Common sense prevails? Trust but verify, we'll see won't we.

Chertoff has said the fence is good for the environment because immigrants degrade the land with trash and human waste when they sneak illegally into the country.

And sanity? Instead of turning the SOUTHERN border into a garbage dump, maybe the feds figured it was best to just build the fence. I wonder who will cart off the garbage already piled up there. How many animals had to die before the truth comes out? Where were the environmentalists on this? Oh yeah that's redundant it wouldn't further the aims of the Democrat party, so never mind, self explanatory.

Remember, this is the cheap single layer fence, not the dual wall fencing that was required. Not even half a loaf.



Best guess is it looks like this -- A section of the unfinished U.S.-Mexico border fence, near the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego.

More here at USAToday.

UPDATE: The waivers have been issued Tuesday Apri 1, 3008

The Homeland Security Department used its legal authority Tuesday to waive environmental and land management laws so it can complete 670 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexican border.

The waivers will allow the department to move ahead with miles of pedestrian- and vehicle-fence construction as well as roads and detection systems.

Homeland Security, under orders from Congress to build the fence, has run into intense opposition along the border from landowners, ranchers and environmentalists. Many didn't want their land taken or for wildlife and rare species to be disturbed.

Environmentalists and open border supporters, in other words, Democrats who need large quantities of ignorant voters to fill their depleted ranks of people standing in line for their government provided freebies, petitioned the Supreme Court to step in.

Two environmental advocacy organizations, Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club, have filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of the waiver provision. Rodger Schlickeisen, Defenders of Wildlife's president, said yesterday's announcement bolsters his group's argument.

Let's See -- I Wonder Who The Drive By Media Supports?

Hard to figure, isn't it? The naive waif suits their purposes best, even if he comes with a black separatists fringe.

Rocket Scientists

“Nothing is easier, or more emotionally satisfying, than blaming high prices on those who charge them, rather than on those who cause them.” –Thomas Sowell

It's easier to wreck the economy than it is to get one going. Much quicker too. Ask Democrat former Pres Jimmy Carter for details. His job nowadays is pounding nails, not by choice I might add :-)

Government control over the economy, you have wide selection of choice, you can go with socialism, fascism, Stalinist or just plain old communism. In the background are Lenin and Trotsky, two old favorites. In fact they are all famous, for the spectacular failure to produce a society that did anything but decay quickly to the lowest common denominator. Equal misery for all. The liberals holy grail.

Jimmy Carter II

Oh really, Obambi doesn't take oil money?

It's true that Obama doesn't take money directly from oil companies, but then, no presidential, House or Senate candidate does. They can't: Corporations have been prohibited from contributing directly to federal candidates since the Tillman Act became law in 1907.

Obama has, however, accepted more than $213,000 in contributions from individuals who work for, or whose spouses work for, companies in the oil and gas industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That's not as much as Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has received more than $306,000 in donations from people tied to the industry, but it's still a substantial amount.

factcheck.org

He lies too, Liberals lie, like the free lunch, Liberalism is a lie. Can't really see how anybody would buy into his shuck and jive two step.

It's illegal for corporations to give money to political candidates, so you can chalk that up to either shuck or jive, your choice. But you knew that, right?

...

If you missed Democrat Pres Jimmy Carter I and the horrors that matching him up with a Democrat Congress yielded, you will love the re-runs. There is no way to explain the pain, despair and misery caused by Jimmy Carter I and his attempt to manage energy.

Key word here is windfall profits tax. Only people pay taxes, not corporations.

Here is how it went, one even days if your license plate ended in a even digit, you got to wait in line for 4-5 hours to get 5 gallons of gas. If you wanted to buy another car, you needed cash, it was impossible to finance a car at 20% + interest rates. If you wanted to buy a house, the interest rate was over 18% -- calculate your payments on that and see if you can afford it. And that was for people who were working. Most businesses basically shuttered and suspended operations. Sort of like what is going on in Venezuela right now, another one of the leftists darlings.

You go Obama, I and rooting for you. Every few years, people need a refresher course on how bad it can really get and how quickly it happens. Put your money in cash bonds and stand by, it's going to be another bender ride, a real rough one. This time, you have to add the Iranian nukes and the black racism, so an Obama Presidency could really top Jimmy Carter I. Heck all Jimmy Carter did was give Iran to the mullahs, and start the whole world terror thing, this time the world might actually blow up.

A Record-Breaking Gamma-Ray Burst

NASA's high-energy Swift Observatory in orbit, cosmic gamma-ray bursts just keep setting new records. The most powerful one yet — in fact, the most violent event ever seen in the universe — flashed into view on the morning of March 19th, 2008. While Swift caught it from orbit, ground-based cameras on the hunt for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) saw a flare of visible light from the burst that peaked around magnitude 5.6.

The afterglow of GRB 080319B was imaged by Swift's X-ray Telescope (left) and Optical/Ultraviolet Telescope (right). It was, by far, the intrinsically brightest gamma-ray-burst afterglow ever seen by man-kind.
NASA / Swift / Stefan Immler and others

It is theorized that in the past gamma-ray bursts may have caused mass extinctions on Earth. More here.

Crab Nebula

This is a mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the Crab Nebula, a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans.

The orange filaments are the tattered remains of the star and consist mostly of hydrogen. The rapidly spinning neutron star embedded in the center of the nebula is the dynamo powering the nebula's eerie interior bluish glow. The blue light comes from electrons whirling at nearly the speed of light around magnetic field lines from the neutron star. The neutron star, like a lighthouse, ejects twin beams of radiation that appear to pulse 30 times a second due to the neutron star's rotation. A neutron star is the crushed ultra-dense core of the exploded star.

The Crab Nebula derived its name from its appearance in a drawing made by Irish astronomer Lord Rosse in 1844, using a 36-inch telescope. When viewed by Hubble, as well as by large ground-based telescopes such as the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, the Crab Nebula takes on a more detailed appearance that yields clues into the spectacular demise of a star, 6,500 light-years away.

The newly composed image was assembled from 24 individual Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 exposures taken in October 1999, January 2000, and December 2000. The colors in the image indicate the different elements that were expelled during the explosion. Blue in the filaments in the outer part of the nebula represents neutral oxygen, green is singly-ionized sulfur, and red indicates doubly-ionized oxygen.

Greenies View Of The Future

Stolen from Steve Milloy's JunkScience website.

PBMR Research Advances

The technology behind the new generation of Pebble Bed Modular Reactors(PBMR) is really enticing. A high efficiency design that is also safe because of the self limiting nature of the reactor core -- No one wants to claim it's meltdown proof, but it appears to be as close to fool proof as it gets. It is also not usable for proliferation of nuclear weapons. Read the link above for details if you want more information.

Recently Westinghouse signed on as a partner when DOE selected Westinghouse/PBMR Team for the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) engineering contract. It is beginning to look like DoE has embarked on the first stage of a program that could result in the construction of a South African-designed pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) in the US.

The latest to sign on to help get this technology into production is Stellenbosch University

Stellenbosch University (SU) and Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) entered into an agreement on Tuesday that will enable the University to conduct research and development on behalf of PBMR in areas that will enhance the performance and safety of the world-class reactor.

The Pebble Bed Modular Reactor is an innovative technology that is characterized by inherent safe design features. It operates at a high temperature, enabling high efficiency energy conversion for diverse applications. It falls in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) category of small and medium reactors and, if configured into an electricity-generating plant, will be about one sixth the size of the Koeberg reactor. A number of units could be grouped together in a multi-module configuration if greater generating capacity is required.

The contract re-emphasises Stellenbosch University’s increasing status as a technologically innovative and research-driven university.

You have to wonder why the US doesn't get all in on this promising research and make it producible. Heck even small third world African countries could utilize one of those safe reactors -- Maybe that is the reason why not, do you think? So many promising new things in the world, so depressing is the Democrats' doom and gloom soup line vision for America -- What a contrast.

Economics For Democrats

Once upon a time, there was a little PC compnay, quaint name, called "Dell". The little company got bigger and bigger. Soon it needed a place to build a huge PC manufacturing plant. Austin Texas stepped up, offering big tax breaks, build here, build here, please build here. Dell chose Round Rock Texas, a nice low cost area outside of Austin.

Now times change, the tax breaks have expired, the costs have risen, and Dell says, "we're out of here". Need to cut costs to remain competitive, thanks for the memories.

Corporate tax rates in the US hoover around 40%, depending on State, the highest in the world.

Dell takes steps to save $3B USD over the next three years

Dell is continuing its efforts to cut costs and an Austin, TX desktop manufacturing plant looks to be the latest victim. As is the case with many U.S.-based companies these days, Dell will cut jobs and rely even more on overseas manufacturing "to restore the competitive advantage of the company’s operating model."

The Austin plant closure is a part of a five-point Dell growth plan which will focus on global consumer, enterprise, notebooks, small and medium enterprise and emerging countries. By removing the Austin plant from its portfolio, Dell hopes to make a sizeable dent in the $3B in savings that it hopes to realize over the next three years.

Democrats' economics, more people on welfare. I can't say this enough, if you don't know who Democrat Jimmy Carter was, look it up. It is what happens to prosperity when you have a Democrat socialist President paired with a fawning Democrat Congress. The match with the current crop of 60s throw back Democrat flower power leaders is perfect for disaster. The unwary better take financial steps to protect yourself now, unless of course you bought into one of them no interest house loans, then you be screwed, sorry. If you think it's all a scare tactic, don't worry, if missed the first run, the re-run will be here shortly.

Capital in the modern world moves with the speed of light. Like oil does, heh, heh, heh. Communists don't think anything ever changes.

Democrat's Play Like You Are Doing Something, 'Oil Day'

The oil companies are in Congress 'for a grilling'. The Democrat's Union truckers are in the streets protesting high diesel prices. The stage is all set for the leftists liberals who caused the problem, to minke like they are doing something about it. Take those profits.

Queue the media drive by parrots ... This hit the AP drive by wires at about 8:00 AM -- Curtains ...

Congress Has Big Questions for Big Oil

WASHINGTON (AP) — Big Oil is once again being called on the carpet.

Senior executives of the five largest U.S. oil companies were to appear before a congressional committee Tuesday where they were likely to find frustrated lawmakers in no mood for small talk.

"These companies are defending billions of federal subsidies ... while reaping over a hundred billion dollars in profits in just the last year alone," complained Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., in previewing the hearing.

The lawmakers were scheduled to hear from top executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Shell Oil Co., BP America Inc., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips, which together earned about $123 billion last year because of soaring oil and gasoline prices.

Markey, chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said he wants to know why, with such profits, the oil industry is steadfastly fighting to keep $18 billion in tax breaks, stretched over 10 years.

He said the executives would be asked to explain how they can get energy prices down in the short run and "in the long run what are they going to do to shift the focus to a renewable energy agenda."

The world runs on oil, only Democrats and communists don't get that part. Burning food is for idiots, well that works as well.

I bet the enviro-whackjobs are cheering, yeah! yeah! yeah! stick it too them. But I bet the people that work for them, the people that buy their products, depend on their fuel supplies are saying "say what! -- what are these Democrat Congressional clowns doing now".

Hey lefties, why not allow drilling for new oil? How about building nuclear power plants? How about coal to liquids technology. How about doing something other than grand standing and "getting those evil oil companies".

Democrat President Jimmy Carter did this ... the results were spectacular. Look it up if you weren't there for the misery, the despair, the downright doom and gloom he caused.

These socialists Democrats are so boring to the educated. Fortunately for them, their typical voter is ignorant. They seem to have forgotten that communism is a monumental failure everywhere it is tried.

In case you don't know, Markey is Pelosi's stooge who took over the global warming hysterical committee in the House when the anointed chairman refused to play the hysterical global warming chairman properly to Ms Pelosi's satisfaction. Play acting is the Democrats strong suit. But the media parrot is wheezing badly and isn't going to last much longer. Papering over the scam didn't even work for the Soviet Union and isn't now working for that leftist darling Chavez -- Venezuela, prosperous to disaster in six months flat.

Oh yeah, one more thing, oil companies don't pay taxes, you do. Make sure you remember this as the curtain rises on this staged scam.