The Paris climate conference focused on fear, not climate reality

The Paris climate conference is now over. The Christian Science Monitor reported on Saturday that the rap of the chairman’s gavel “signaled unanimous – if not unanimously enthusiastic – support from all parties engaged in this year's UN climate talks. It comes at the end of a year scientists say will likely be the hottest ever on record.”

After all the time involved and the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced getting the hundreds of representatives from 196 nations all in the same place, and then back home again, the agreement does not put the world on a path toward what scientists regard as a safe level of global warming, but the agreement sets forth a clear path for countries to identify their own targets for CO2 reduction. Ultimately, participants want a global carbon-free environment by 2060, at the latest, meaning that every car, building, plane, ship, train, and power plant would have to operate without burning any fossil fuels.

Days prior to the closing U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told the ministerial session, “The clock is ticking toward climate disaster,” and former Vice-President Al Gore compared the need to combat climate change to the abolition of slavery, giving women the right to vote and the civil rights battle. Gore said, “The right choice is to safeguard the future for the next generation and for the generations to come.”

There were scary stories of rising sea levels, causing residents of low-lying areas like the Marshall Islands to lobby strenuously for the agreement, while droughts, flooding, and other extreme weather events were predicted to increase elsewhere on the planet if CO2 emissions aren’t reigned in. And to make sure to attract the attention of enough third world countries, billions of dollars in support for affected economies is on the table, supposedly to be paid by the rich countries, like the United States.

The whole world is concerned because of the idea that too much CO2 in the atmosphere will cause catastrophes sometime in the distant future. Carbon dioxide is what plants that produce oxygen for us to breath live on.

All of this scare mongering tended to overshadow the dismal record of climate predictions and data manipulations from the not-so-distant past that casts doubt on the need for turning the energy universe upside-down. Here are some of the scary predictions of global warming catastrophes that did not come true:

* By 1980 all of the important animal life in the sea will be extinct.
* By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people.
* The world will be eleven degrees colder by the year 2000.
* By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching Earth by half.
* A general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000.
* Within a few years children just aren't going to know what snow is.

Add to those failed prognostications a global warming hiatus for at least16 years, according to the British Met Office, and energetic disagreement about man-caused climate change among climate scientists, and the agreement looks like a gigantic global shakedown.

As an example, while Barack Obama is busy regulating America’s coal-fired electricity generating plants out of existence, China is constructing new plants. According to the Heritage Foundation’s Nicolas Loris, we should be wary of China’s commitment to reduce emissions. China is by far the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and is currently constructing 350 coal-fired power plants and has plans to build another 800.

The Wall Street Journal notes, “In 2013 China burned 3.9 billion tons of coal, almost as much as the rest of the world.” Obama seems to think that harming the U.S. economy by shutting down U.S. fossil fuel-burning facilities will negate China’s feverish coal-burning economy. Loris asks pointedly, “This is the country that we’re going to trust to peak emissions 15 years from now?” 

And trust is the operative word: all countries are on scouts honor to do what they have said they will do, without official oversight or penalties.

According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2013 “Historical Data Workbook,” 87 percent of the energy mankind uses every second comes from burning fossil fuels.

People who live in cold climates use them to warm their homes, and people who live in warm climates use them to cool their homes. Fossil fuels are used to plant and harvest crops that feed people, and are used to transport food from places where food is produced to places where it is needed and wanted. They are used to light the darkness, to entertain us, transport us, diagnose disease, communicate with each other, mass-produce products we need and want, and to provide security in our homes and for the nation.

Fossil fuel use has improved the lives of millions of people worldwide, and millions more can benefit from it. There are no replacement technologies that even approach filling the void Obama and the other climate change advocates are creating. We are on course for a disaster.

Religious beliefs take a beating in today’s politically correct world

Issues of religious freedom have been in the news a good bit lately. Primarily, these news events occur when someone finds their religious beliefs in conflict with another person’s secular desire. A baker or a florist who regularly sells their wares to gay/lesbian customers declines to bake a cake or make floral arrangements for their wedding because their religious beliefs do not approve homosexual marriage. Despite the fact that there are many, or if not many, at least some alternatives to those bakers or florists, those who refused to provide services were persecuted and some driven out of business by the uproar the offended gay/lesbian couples instigated because these people held to their religious beliefs.

More recently, a county clerk in Kentucky refused to sign marriage licenses of gay/lesbian couples after a court ruled that treating gay/lesbian couples differently than heterosexual couples is discrimination, and therefore illegal. A judge jailed the clerk for refusing to act, despite the commonly observed practice by judges of using the least radical punishment for such problems first, and then proceeding to more stringent punishment and ultimately jail as the last resort.

This last episode is a much different situation than those previously mentioned, as it involves a government employee refusing to do her sworn duty. But the attention it received and the way the judge handled the clerk does illustrate the size of the schism between people following their religious beliefs and social preferences or legal mandates.

If there were options other than punishing these Americans for following their religious beliefs, why were bakers, florists, and others who have had similar misfortunes singled out for what may rightly be termed persecution. This point is particularly relevant in a nation in which the first right among four specifically enumerated rights in the first of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights is the free exercise of religion?

It is also relevant to note the degree to which these events attract media coverage, which highlights how unpopular traditional religious practices have become to the media and many Americans in the 21^st century.

Combine a media mindset apparently hostile to religious practices with a tendency to try to tear down Republican presidential candidates and you find Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson being given rough treatment after saying that a Muslim shouldn’t be President of the United States. "I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that," he said a while back on NBC's "Meet the Press."

A bit later in the interview, he said, when asked about a Muslim running for Congress, that it would depend upon the individual in question. "Congress is a different story, but it depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are, just like it depends on what anybody else is," Dr. Carson said. "If there's somebody who is of any faith but they say things and their life has been consistent with things that will elevate this nation and make it possible for everybody to succeed and bring peace and harmony, then I'm with them."

Host Chuck Todd also asked him whether a president's faith should matter to voters. "I guess it depends on what that faith is," he said. "If it's inconsistent with the values and principles of America, then of course it should matter. But if it fits within the realm of America and consistent with the Constitution, no problem." Asked whether he thinks Islam is consistent with the Constitution, Carson said: "No, I don't – I do not."

Clearly, Dr. Carson believes that anyone subjugating their religious beliefs, whatever religious beliefs they may hold, to the requirements of our Constitution is the key element.

He appeared on ABC News’ “This Week” last Sunday where reporter Martha Raddatz grilled him on that same statement, either ignorant of his other comments further defining his view on the issue, or unwilling to acknowledge them. Here is part of that interview:

Raddatz: “I want to go back to your controversial comments on the possibility of a Muslim president. The question seemed quite clear. The question was: Should a president’s faith matter? You said, I guess it depends on what that faith is. The question was: So do you believe that Islam is consistent with the Constitution, and you said no, I do not. I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that. 

Do you stand by that now?”

Carson: “Well, first of all, you know, what I said is on a transcript and it’s there for anybody.”

Raddatz: “I’m reading the transcript, Dr. Carson, that’s exactly what you said.”

Carson: “No – read the paragraph before that where I said anybody, doesn’t matter what their religious background, if they accept American values and principles and are willing to subjugate their religious beliefs to our Constitution. I have no problem with them.

Why do you guys always leave that part out, I wonder?”

Political correctness – or opposing unpopular things in favor of popular things – is the order of the day, in life and in the media.

The U.S. in the 21st Century: Compassion takes a back seat to politics

The ink was barely dry on newspapers reporting the murder of nine people attending a Bible study Wednesday night at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC, when it started.

Amid the understandable outrage and feelings of grief and compassion, there arose the clatter of political demagoguery, as the vehicles were gassed up and engines were started to rush and join the forming parade.

Since the participants of this parade formed it not to provide aid and comfort to those in need, but to avail themselves of a convenient opportunity – as former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel advised, “Never let a good crisis go to waste” – reason and honesty were banned from the event.

Thursday morning Faheem Younus, who identifies himself as “Muslimerican,” and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland, posted on Twitter: “This terrorist #CharlestonShooting is predictably White, called a ‘gunman’ by the media and has no mention of his faith.” It was most important to him to imply that had the murderer been a Muslim, that point would have been made abundantly clear.

And no leftist demagogic rant would be complete without taking a shot at Fox News. “The ideology of racism promoted by the @FoxNewsandCo. breeds the terrorists who commit #CharlestonShooting,” he tweeted.

At least in the midst of his mis-focused, cheap-shot tweets, the learned professor did brush up against the main truth: This attack was a racist act.

On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton used the shooting to advantage in her self-promotion. First, she suggested that “inflammatory things about Mexicans,” uttered by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, may have “triggered” the incident, and then turned to liberalism’s favorite boogeyman, gun control.

But at least President Barack Obama started out on the right path: “We knew their pastor, Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who, along with eight others gathered in prayer and fellowship, was murdered last night,” he said. “And to say our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families and their community doesn't say enough to convey the heartache and the sadness and the anger that we feel.”

But then: “We do know that once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun,” he continued, finally getting to his main point.

No one argues that some people should not have guns. The argument begins with the method people like Mr. Obama prefer. The same people who use guns for violence would also use knives, TNT, poison, an automobile, hijacked air liners, or whatever tool they could find to commit violence against others, a point the anti-gun faction seems immune to understanding.

“At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this kind of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries … with this kind of frequency,” Mr. Obama said. “It is in our power to do something about it.”

Mr. Obama must have found some study showing that the U.S. leads the world’s advanced countries in mass shooting casualties. The Rampage Shooting Index, in fact, shows that among 12 countries, from 2009 to 2013, the U.S. had 227 such deaths. Norway had 77, Germany had 25, the UK had 13, and Israel had 11. The US had 38 such incidents and the nations previously mentioned had only 1 to 3.

That is pretty damning evidence. But as usual in these sorts of campaigns, there is more.

The Index clearly shows that when population is taken into account, the results are far different. Per 1 million population Norway had 15.3 fatalities and .19 incidents per 1 million people; Germany - .31 fatalities, .04 incidents; the UK - .019 fatalities, .02 incidents; Israel - 1.38 fatalities, .25 incidents. The U.S. had .72 fatalities in .12 incidents, and fewer fatalities and incidents per 1 million than Norway and Israel. Furthermore, of the five countries discussed, all but the U.S. are said to have “Restrictive” gun policies.

Also, of the 12 nations in this study, when population is a factor the U.S. drops from first in mass shootings to seventh.

Mr. Obama was wrong. Again.

If you feel so strongly that a higher degree of gun control is a viable policy, why use faulty data to try to sell the idea to the people? If your cause is just, you needn’t lie or deceive to gain support.

Laying aside the distasteful efforts to politicize this issue, the real issue is not guns, it is the impulse to harm or kill innocent people, and how to protect against those impulses.

This was a racist act perpetrated by a white guy who used a gun. Dylann Roof had a drug arrest and conviction on his record, and had a recent history of racially charged comments. Reportedly, his father gave him a pistol for his 21st birthday in April.

What gun law would have prevented Dylann Roof from killing those nine people?

When you are caught using faulty data, you tell the world that you really have a goal other than the stated goal in mind.

The left wants to shut down opposition, rather than debate issues

Not everyone on the left is intolerant of contrary ideas, or afraid of open debate of ideas, or so convinced of their own superiority that they deem civil and informed debate unnecessary, but many of them are.

Back in 2010, thirty liberal organizations, including the Center for Media Justice, the Rainbow Push Coalition, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the National Association of Latino Independent Producers, and Common Cause, among others, supported an effort to have the Federal Communications Commission clamp down on so-called “hate speech” on talk radio, the internet, and the cable television news networks. The imagined “hate speech” resulted from support by those media outlets for Arizona’s illegal immigration bill, which those trying to limit the debate characterized as “one of the harshest pieces of anti-Latino legislation in this country’s history.”

The law, SB 1070, passed in 2010 by the Arizona legislature and signed into law by the governor, created state penalties relating to immigration law enforcement, and included trespassing, harboring and transporting illegal immigrants, alien registration documents, employer sanctions, and human smuggling among the things Arizona declared to be state issues.

Given the negligence of the federal government to provide border security, and the harm to residents of border states like Arizona from drug dealers and other thugs and hoodlums who easily move back and forth across the border, passing laws to protect residents against the harm that often results from illegal immigration might be the right thing to do. 

Unless you are one of the intolerant liberals. They basically said that if you support that law, you are a hater and a racist, and being unwilling or unable to discuss the issue in a civil manner, they resorted to: “we say we are right, and that’s the end of the story.”

And then there is Robert Kennedy, Jr. who wants organizations that disagree with the idea that human activities are responsible for global warming or climate change to lose their business charter.

As Mr. Kennedy wrote for The Huffington Post last October, “corporations which deliberately, purposefully, maliciously and systematically sponsor climate lies should be given the death penalty. This can be accomplished through an existing legal proceeding known as ‘charter revocation.’ State Attorneys General can invoke this remedy whenever corporations put their profit-making before the ‘public welfare.’"

He wants to intimidate those organizations – which include both corporations and think tanks – to discourage them from acting in their own best interest or advocating policies they think are beneficial, and/or opposing those policies that would harm them or that they believe are harmful. But not all organizations; just the ones that support or oppose the “wrong things.” 

Coal mining companies would be punished for pointing out the fraud committed by global warming activists, like some of the International Panelon Climate Change scientists, and for challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s water quality standards that are so severe that Evian bottled water and apple juice would be ruled unsafe, but organizations that followed the politically correct line would be left alone. 

Mr. Kennedy is one of the many who is willing to punish Americans who disagree with his ideological mania, so long as it helps him further his narrow ideological goals, and nothing must stand in the way. 

He has forgotten, or perhaps never learned, that freedom of speech is guaranteed to enable Americans to say things that may be unpopular with some or many, and specifically to protect political dissent. But disagreement, debate and discussion of political issues, whether by individuals or by organizations like corporations and think tanks, form the path to informing the public, thus yielding a greater possibility for sensible policymaking and better government.

Mr. Kennedy, like many leftists, is more than happy to force his ideas on the rest of us, and it matters not whether the truth is on his side, or whether a majority agrees with him.

It isn’t difficult to picture him regaling himself in the court of some tin-pot dictator, like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, gleefully ordering “off with their heads” for those who have the temerity to indulge in independent thought.

Steven F. Hayward, inaugural scholar in conservative thought and philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, says of the left’s tendency to shut down dissent, “These inclinations to rule certain issues out of bounds by denouncing dissenters with moral calumny rather than argument is not a sign of health in liberalism.  It is a sign of ideological senescence.”

Perhaps liberalism is old and tired, which would explain why its adherents gave up that term in favor of “progressivism.” But whatever they call their ideology, the left cannot persuade others to their way of thinking through the power and logic of their ideas, and is why they have to resort to shutting down and shutting up their opponents. 

We see today in America a situation where groups that advocate some idea or action have employed exaggeration, deception and other nefarious means to gain far more influence than their causes warrant. This is wrong on several levels, but more than just wrong, it is a threat to our liberty.

Climate change: What 150 years of global warming has done to Earth

As we celebrated the beginning of spring last week, then had our hopes for an end to winter weather dashed by forecasts of snow this week, a new report on global warming/climate change came out.

This report tells us that while the last 16 years where no additional warming of the climate were recorded, the previous 150 years where warming did occur are more important. It also explained what that century and a half of warming has meant for life on the Earth.

Since 1970 environment watchers have made quite a few predictions of dire consequences to the planet caused by the activities of humans that have thrown the environment into chaos, among which are:

• By 1980 all of the important animal life in the sea will be extinct. 
• By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people.
• The world will be eleven degrees colder by the year 2000.
• By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching Earth by half.
• A general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000.
• Within a few years children just aren't going to know what snow is. Snowfall will be a very rare and exciting event.

Fortunately, none of those predictions has come true, but what has 150 years of warming done to the humans whose dangerous activities are said to be causing it?

Well, according to a report from the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) by H. Sterling Burnett, this warming has been beneficial, not dangerous.

Over the last 150 years the Earth has warmed an average of 0.8 degrees Celsius, according to economist Richard Tol, an increase that has had a positive impact on the world’s economy. Dr. Tol, who holds doctorates in economics and environmental economics, and teaches at the University of Sussex and Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, says further that an additional rise of 2.2 degrees in temperature would continue to yield substantial benefits until at least 2080.

Mr. Burnett cites data from Dr. Tol showing that climate change has added 1.4 percent to global economic output over the last century, a figure that should rise to 1.5 percent by 2025. The increase in CO2 added 0.8 percent to GDP due to the boost it produced in agricultural production, and the warmer temperatures reduced the demand for heating, adding another 0.4 percent to GDP.

“With higher CO2 levels, plants thrive and become more efficient in their use of water,” the NCPA report states. “And because most of the warming has reduced low nighttime temperatures, the globe has seen fewer growth-stunting frost events, as well as longer growing seasons.”

Citing information from agronomist and geographer Craig Idso, the Stuart report asserts that improved plant growth over a 50-year period starting in 1961 totaled $3.2 trillion, and from today through 2050 increased CO2 will add $9.8 trillion to crop production.

And the greatest benefits in improved agricultural production have occurred in Africa, with one-third of that continent’s countries growing at 6 percent, and the poverty line dropping from 51 percent to 39 percent.

At the same time as this very positive information materializes, an assistant philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology has advocated putting some of those who oppose the manmade climate change theory in jail.

Lawrence Torcello’s stepping-off point came after an earthquake in Italy where six Italian scientists and a defense minister were subsequently sentenced to six years in prison because the official didn’t adequately warn the public following several minor tremors of the possibility, or likelihood, of a full-scale quake, which did occur, and the scientists failed to correct the official’s error.

“When it comes to global warming, much of the public remains in denial about a set of facts that the majority of scientists clearly agree on,” says the philosophy professor. “With such high stakes, an organized campaign funding misinformation ought to be considered criminally negligent.”

It’s quite a stretch to equate people failing to provide information about a likely imminent event with people who financially support the contrarian view of a popular but unproven scientific theory, the contrarian view of which is itself strongly supported by scientists.

Further thwarting the Torcello plan is the indisputable fact that the time between tremors and the earthquake they foreshadowed was a matter of hours, where any harm that might come to humans from opposing the radical prescriptions to combat climate change is years or decades in the future.

Applying the professor’s goofy idea to those who financially supported opposition to the dire predictions listed previously, we might have dozens in prison for being correct.

Liberals seem always to prefer shutting down dissent rather than having civil and productive discussions about the different ideas. This happens for two reasons. First, they are unable to disprove the opposing position with actual facts, and second, their arrogance compels in them the belief that they are always right, and that justifies them using any means necessary to implement their radical and dangerous agenda.

NIPCC report disputes the conventional wisdom about climate change

The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is a panel of scientists organized in 2003 by Dr. S. Fred Singer and the Science & Environmental Policy Project. Unlike the better-known Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is a government-sponsored and politically motivated group with a man-causes-global-warming bias, the NIPCC receives no funding from government and does not share the IPCC’s predisposition that climate change is man-made and therefore requires a United Nations solution.

Hence, Dr. Singer’s group, which consists of some 50 independent scientists from universities and private institutions around the world (the US, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Norway, Canada, Italy, the UK, France, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Spain) who disagree with the IPCC’s theory, “seeks to objectively analyze and interpret data and facts without conforming to any specific agenda,” according to a summary of the 1,200-page report “Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science” that was released in September of this year.

Most of what we read, see and hear from the media is the opinion held and promoted by the United Nations’ IPCC. No matter what your opinion about whether or not human activities have a significant effect, or any effect, on the Earth’s climate, it certainly cannot hurt to have available the analysis of a group of scientists – the NIPCC – that believes the data show a different reality than that promoted by the IPCC.

Among the group’s findings are:

•    Atmospheric CO2 is a mild greenhouse gas that exerts a diminishing warming effect as its concentration increases.

•    Earth has not warmed significantly for the past 16 years despite an 8 percent increase in atmospheric CO2 emissions, which represents 34 percent of all extra CO2 added to the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution.

•    The causes of historic global warming remain uncertain, but significant correlations exist between climate patterning and multidecadal variation and solar activity over the past few hundred years.

•    The overall warming since about 1860 corresponds to a recovery from the Little Ice Age modulated by natural multidecadal cycles driven by ocean-atmosphere oscillations, or by solar variations at the de Vries (~208 year) and Gleissberg (~80 year) and shorter periodicities.

•    CO2 is a vital nutrient used by plants in photosynthesis. Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere “greens” the planet and helps feed the growing human population.

•    No close correlation exists between temperature variation over the past 150 years and human-related CO2 emissions. The parallelism of temperature and CO2 increase between about 1980 and 2000 AD could be due to chance and does not necessarily indicate causation.

•    The causes of historic global warming remain uncertain, but significant correlations exist between climate patterning and multidecadal variation and solar activity over the past few hundred years.

The summary also presents key facts about surface temperature that argue against the UN IPCC’s position, a few of which follow:

•    Whether today’s global surface temperature is seen to be part of a warming trend depends upon the time period considered.

•    Over (climatic) time scales of many thousand years, temperature is cooling; over the historical (meteorological) time scale of the past century temperature has warmed. Over the past 16 years, there has been no net warming despite an increase in atmospheric CO2 of 8 percent. (See second bullet above.)

•    There was nothing unusual about either the magnitude or rate of the late twentieth century warming pulses represented on the HadCRUT record, both falling well within the envelope of known, previous natural variations.

•    No empirical evidence exists to support the assertion that a planetary warming of 2 degrees Centigrade would be net ecologically or economically damaging.

These findings by this group of international scientists that contradict the positions of the IPCC gain strength from the evidence of fraud among scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia, many associated with the IPCC. Emails exchanged between these scientists obtained in 2009 demonstrated fraud, dishonesty and errors in the arguments supporting the theory of man-made global warming.

As reported in Human Events online edition, some of the emails revealed contempt for disagreeable scientific data and a “slavish devotion to the climate change political agenda pushed by the politicians and government bureaucrats funding their research.”

In the report’s Conclusion the authors say: “Few scientists deny that human activities can have an effect on local climate or that the sum of such local effects could hypothetically rise to the level of an observable global signal. The key questions to be answered, however, are whether the human global signal is large enough to be measured and if it is, does it represent, or is it likely to become, a dangerous change outside the range of natural variability?”

The Conclusion includes a quote by British biologist Conrad Waddington from 1941: “It is … important that scientists must be ready for their pet theories to turn out to be wrong. Science as a whole certainly cannot allow its judgment about facts to be distorted by ideas of what ought to the true, or what one may hope to be true.”

Those scientists who believe that man’s activities harm the planet should take this good advice to heart.

The five disgusting Ps of the Obama/Reid Government Shutdown

We are led to believe the government shutdown is one of the worst things to afflict the country since … well, pick something.

But that’s just more exaggeration from the left in Washington and in the media. The vast majority of Americans would not notice the shut down absent the barrage of horror stories we’ve been treated to, and one other factor.

Shutdowns aren’t that unusual. Since 1976 there have been 17. Six occurred during the Carter administration, 8 during the Reagan administration, one during the elder Bush administration, and 2 during the Clinton administration.

Most lasted less than a week, but in the Carter administration 4 lasted 10 days or more, and the longest of all those shutdowns in 1996 lasted 21 days. On average, government shutdowns last about 6.5 days. There has been a lag in shutdowns since 1997 in the second Clinton term, through the George W. Bush administration, and through the first Obama term.

There is obvious discomfort among furloughed federal workers. However, the House of Representatives voted Saturday to fund back pay, which is what usually happens in shut downs. So, the real pain will be felt by some of the American people, due to the aforementioned “other factor.”

Three things are true about this shutdown: First, the Republican-led House passed three bills to restore government funding. Second, each House measure also sought to delay or defund the Affordable Care Act (ACA). And third, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refused to act on the House measures and President Barack Obama threatened to veto them.

From this we see: a) House Republicans want to reopen the government and passed three measures to do so, and also wanted to save the American people from the ACA with its broken promises, serious problems, and goodies given to large employers and Members of Congress and their staffs. And b), to Sen. Reid and President Obama, putting the furloughed employees back to work, activating the inactive government functions and opening closed facilities are far less important than implementing the highly flawed ACA.

Mr. Obama is comfortable in his “It’s good to be the king” self-indulgence. But, he’s not “the” king, or even “a” king; he is merely the President of the United States, which is certainly an important and powerful position, but the Executive Branch of which he’s the head is just one-third of our government.

Those who took civics or other classes in American government know that among the ingenious features of the U.S. Constitution are the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances, which were designed to prevent any one branch from acquiring more power than the other two.

Mr. Obama – who was reportedly a constitutional law lecturer – believes that the president is the most important figure in the government, ignoring the Constitutional prohibition of any branch gaining the degree of power and control he desires.

Democrats hold this perspective about the ACA:

*It was passed by Congress and signed by the president.

*The Supreme Court found it constitutional.

*There was an election that confirmed the country’s support for Obamacare.

*Thus, the matter is settled: the ACA is the law of the land. End of discussion.

This scenario is rife with weaknesses. Every Republican in the House also won election in 2012, and nothing prevents a law being repealed or amended. And remember that at one time slavery was the “law of the land,” and Congress made a huge error in abolishing the sale of alcohol through the 18th Amendment.

Congress can right wrongs in the law, as it did with slavery; it can repeal bad laws, as it did with the 18th Amendment. And, it can repeal, defund, or amend the error-ridden ACA.

Because Republicans did not lie down and let the Democrats have their way, we have been treated to the aforementioned “other factor,” the 5 Ps: the petulant, peevish, petty, and punkish political behavior that characterizes the shut down.

Faced with an obstinate opposition party, President Obama convened his strategy team from a nearby elementary school, where members of the third grade gathered on the playground to formulate a plan.

Noting that monuments and memorials were not closed during previous shutdowns, they recommended this tactic to cause pain: Close national parks and monuments, as well as some facilities that receive no federal funds and are not federally owned, like Mount Vernon. Close Florida Bay and Biscayne Bay to commercial fishing. Place barriers to block the World War II Memorial that has no gates and is wide open to visitors. Tell people who rent slips for their live-on boats or own homes on Lake Mead they can’t stay there. Block scenic overlooks, like at Mt. Rushmore, by placing traffic cones that prevent drivers from pulling over to view the monuments. Perfect third grade strategy.

Wesley Pruden, writing in The Washington Times, quoted an angry Park Service Ranger, who confirmed that attitude: “It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,” he said. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”

You see, if the shutdown doesn’t hurt people, it doesn’t help the Democrats.

The IRS scandal hearing would be hilarious if it wasn't so serious

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearings on Internal Revenue Service malfeasance has produced scenes worthy of a Mel Brooks film, or maybe "Hogan's Heroes" (“I know nussing!”) As of Friday morning, the following had transpired.

Lois Lerner appeared before the committee last Wednesday. She is the IRS director of exempt organizations, which is the office that deliberately targeted organizations with "Tea Party," "Patriot" and other identifiers in their names indicating they were conservative organizations. These organizations not only had their applications for 501(c) tax-exempt status delayed for up to three years, but in many cases were asked for information that is clearly outside the legitimate areas of interest of the IRS, and which crossed the line into unconstitutionality and perhaps illegality.

Ms. Lerner told the Committee in an opening statement that Committee members have already accused her of providing false information to Congress. However, she said, “I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations. And I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.”

Having thus stated the case for her innocence, she then invoked Fifth Amendment protections against incriminating herself, and refused to answer any questions.

Translation: "I did nothing wrong, but I won't answer any questions that might show that I did something wrong."

Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked her to reconsider, and when she refused he then dismissed her and her attorney from the hearing room. However, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) objected, pointing out that since Ms. Lerner actually testified by making an opening statement, she should have to stay and answer the lawmakers' questions.

"You don't get to tell your side of the story and then not be subjected to cross-examination," Rep. Gowdy said. "That's not the way it works. She waived her right to Fifth Amendment privilege by issuing an opening statement. She ought to stand here and answer our questions," he said.

Ms. Lerner was ultimately dismissed, but with the caveat that she may be recalled. Better late than never, on Thursday she was suspended from her job. With pay.

This is not the first time the long-time federal employee has been suspected of questionable behavior. When she headed the Enforcement Office at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) from 1986 until 2001, there appeared to be politically motivated harassment of conservative groups not unlike what the IRS  did. In the late 1990s, the FEC launched an investigation of the Christian Coalition that ultimately cost the organization hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours of lost work.

However, in addition to failing to prove that the Coalition did anything wrong is the question of whether the FEC even had authority to assert the charges it leveled against the Coalition, which was absolved of any wrongdoing in 1999. Following this suspicious investigation Ms. Lerner was promoted to acting General Counsel at the FEC in 2001.

Next to testify was Douglas Shulman, who was appointed by George W. Bush and headed the IRS during the first Obama term. In 2012 he testified before the Committee, saying, "As you know, we pride ourselves in being a non-political, non-partisan organization." He continued, "There is absolutely no political targeting." We now know that was clearly untrue.

In last week's appearance Mr. Shulman denied that he had discussed targeting conservative groups with anyone at the White House in any of the more than 100 times he visited the White House complex between 2010 and 2011.  “It would not have been appropriate to have a conversation with anyone at the White House about the subject of discriminating against conservative groups,” he said.

When asked if he could recall the nature of any of those visits, Mr. Shulman responded, "The Easter Egg Roll with my kids." Seriously.

In response to questioning from Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Mr. Shulman replied: "I accept the fact that this happened on my watch and I am very sorry that this happened while I was at the IRS. I feel horrible about this for the agency, for the people there, for the great public servants. I am not sure what else I can say." He could have overtly taken responsibility for his agency's malfeasance while he headed it, and apologized to the victims, but he didn't.

Ms. Duckworth, a military veteran, said that she was "deeply disappointed" by his response, explaining that soldiers serving their country know "you can never delegate responsibility and that you are always responsible for the performance, the training, the actions of the men and women under you."

Former President Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that read: "The Buck Stops Here." This is a concept foreign to many in this administration. But it is the law of leadership, whether at the department level, or at the chief executive level: Whatever happens on your watch is your responsibility.

Maybe actually holding people accountable for their mismanagement through firings and prosecution will wake up sleeping bureaucrats like Ms. Lerner and Mr. Shulman, and restore the idea of "service" to public service.