More about tonight’s SOTU address – I was disappointed with the energy section, by not addressing domestic oil production, which can help us now, not in 25 years. The public would be benefited if the record could be set straight on what is an energy source (e.g., oil, coal, nuclear) and what is energy storage (e.g. ethanol, batteries, hydrogen).

We in California ditched the electric car mandate when the public realized that (1) the batteries would have to be charged somehow, (2) batteries are heavy, expensive, and produce hazardous waste, and (3) batteries are hazards to rescue workers in a crash. Now, with the hybrids, the firemen and cleanup crews will have to deal with the acid and the gasoline.

Ethanol would be okay if we could find deposits of it somewhere. But guess what – it has to be produced! And so far, it consumes more energy to produce it than it gives back (same with hydrogen). Ethanol from agriculture? Sure, if you can live with the soil depletion, water consumption, and fossil fuel for the farm machinery amounting to a ridiculously negative tradeoff.

Please — go with the known solutions first before chasing the fantasies.

Gov. Kaine’s response to the president’s SOU address tonight illustrates in a few sentences the basic dishonesty of the Democratic party. In order, he made the following points (among others):

1. While his state (Virginia) is running a budget surplus, the federal government is running up “huge deficits.”
2. The president’s “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) Act is an “unfunded mandate.”
3. The NCLB Act prevents teachers from implementing their own “innovative solutions.”

I wanted to ask Gov. Kaine, that if the mandate is really unfunded, then why does his state feel the need to comply? After all, the only hammer the feds have over the states is money. If Virginia failed to follow the “mandate,” the only thing they have to lose is — federal education funding. But didn’t he say the mandate is unfunded?

So my suggestion to Gov. Kaine is, since Virginia is awash in tax revenues, and the feds are running a deficit, that the logical solution is for him to free his teachers from complying with onerous federal mandates, forego any federal education funding (which is either nonexistent or underfunded anyway, right?), use your budget surplus to allow your state’s teachers to employ their own innovative solutions, and let the feds keep their revenues to reduce the federal deficit.

To be fair to Gov. Kaine, he’s probably the product of public schools.

We continue to hear reports about the “widening gap” between rich and poor from reporters and pundits who either flunked math in school or never took it. A few basic lessons that even those who never learned math might understand:

1, The income scale is fixed at one end and unrestrained at the other. No data are recorded for persons who earn less than zero, while the top end has virtually no limit.

2. When the economy grows, the number who earn more than the median will outnumber those who earn less than the median. This moves the median upward, but not as much as the top end, since the bottom end is fixed (see 1.). (The median has as many below it as above it and moves with the total population.)

3. While the number of earners who earn little or no income can fall but will never be zero, the number of earners at the top end will grow at a much faster rate in a good economy, widening the “gap” even further.

Conclusion: a “widening income gap” is a good sign.

I heard the buzz about the movie End of the Spear, about a missionary’s son who befriends the killer of his father. I had read about the film in the WSJ and listened to an interview of the author on the radio. I usually have to be dragged to a movie theater, but I felt compelled to see this one, and proposed such to someone I wanted to see it with. But when I recited the synopsis, she balked, stating an distate for stories about people who “impose their culture on another,” e.g., the mission of missionaries, insofar as salvation of human beings is an “imposition” on primitive cultures.

I immediately recounted that St James had “imposed his culture” on the Iberians when he Christianized Spain, and was about to embark on St Patrick in Erin, St Augustine in England, St Paul in Greece, etc. but was abrubtly cut off. (When you are making your point, the shield is raised.) Progressive thought, as part of its rejection of the achievements of Western civilization and embrace of moral relativism, is reduced to longing for the preservation of barbaric and primitive cultures as quaint and natural. Liberty is thus defined as enslavement to perpetual ignorance and primitivism.

If you think I’m exaggerating, just read the critics’ reviews of the film — then see it yourself. At first, you’ll wonder why it was panned while Brokeback Mountain was acclaimed. But the reasons are actually very clear.

I actually heard a member of Congress on one of the Sunday talk shows (can’t remember which one) actually state that if the president did have authority to eavesdrop on communications, the FISA established the procedures for doing so.

Huh? Members of Congress should get a refresher course on the Constitution, which can be amended only by an amendment, not a simple of act of congress. Any law which restricts the president’s constitutional authority is, by definition, unconstitutional, right?

So some say that the president never had the authority to conduct a warrantless seach until FISA came along, while others say he had the authority but that FISA was intended to restrict it to intelligence surveillance. The fact that the detractors are using both sides of their mouths exposes the fallacy of the main argument, that the pursuit of criminal activity (foreign espionage conducted on U.S. soil) was somehow the same as the pursuit of terrorists intending to wreak havoc within the homeland. The fact that they can’t see the difference exposes them as either profoundly stupid or profoundly partisan.

These terrorists aren’t spies (the FISA targets). They’re combatants (and unlawful ones at that). And they aren’t using “telephones” (or the other primitive communication devices of 1978 when the law was written), they’re using cell phones and the Net.

If anything, this should show how creaky and antiquited the FISA is, but is Congress making any effort to replace it? Not likely. They’d rather wring their hands on the Sunday talk shows.

At least the president is concentrating on winning the war.

. . . during the Alito confirmation hearings:
1. Sen. Schumer has not been told that quotas have not yet been imposed on the game of baseball. Otherwise he wouldn’t have used the analogy “if an umpire called 95% of pitches strikes for one team and 95% percent of pitches balls for the other” as an example of discrimination. He isn’t aware that the purpose of an umpire is precisely to “discriminate” between balls and strikes, not to call them according to a formula. If “fairness” is defined by a formula, and not by judgment, then why have judges (or umpires)?
2. Sen. Biden is a self-absorbed, semi-literate buffoon (but of course he already demonstrated those qualities during the Roberts and Rice hearings). His ego is so large, he has no idea how foolish, ignorant, and bigoted he looks. Sad.
3. Sen. Feinstein is obsessed about guns. As if firearms issues have any relationship whatsoever with the judiciary branch.
4. Sen. Kennedy is demented, else he would know that he was addressing Judge Samuel Alito of the 3rd U.S. Circuit, and not the late Joseph Alioto, former mayor of San Francisco. Also sad. Very sad. He’s also obsessed with images of strip-searches of young girls. Sadder still.
5. Sen. Specter is obsessed about abortion, or to be more specific, the unrestricted right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. (Actually, he couldn’t care less, but he believes the American public and his Democrat friends are.) It’s as if the survival of our Republic hinged on the power of judges (and not lawmakers) to define abortion rights.
6. The combined IQs of Schumer, Kennedy, Biden, and Feinstein may equal that of Alito’s.