Watch here:

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN2_wm.aspx

Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters has an excellent wrap-up of the story (damning emails, links) and asks this:

For its part, NewsBusters has sent e-mail messages requesting comment from all of the scientists mentioned in this article. None have responded yet.

However, maybe more importantly, with cap and trade legislation currently before Congress, and an international climate meeting happening in Copenhagen next month, the question is what will America’s leading media outlets do with this news.

Should we expect investigative television programs like “60 Minutes” and “20/20″ to be all over this story interrogating the scientists allegedly involved in these e-mail exchanges?

Will America’s press be as eager to find out the truth of this matter as they were in fact-checking former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s new book?

Consider that at the time of this article’s publishing, only FoxNews.com, NPR.com, and WSJ.com have logged printed stories on this subject from this side of the Atlantic.

Will others follow, and if so, how will they report what on the surface appears to be a huge, developing story?

Think of all the people [Al Gore] who stand to make billions should this lie be the foundation for worldwide environmental policy. Think of how the government will invade Americans’ lives to “save a planet” that is in no need of saving. Consider how negotiations between governments will be changed when data gets reevaluated. Hello Kyoto?

The implications of manipulated science of this scale are breath taking. The government funds millions in environmental research. Millions of tax-payer dollars also go for medical research, it should be noted. Public policy is made by the outcomes of this research.

Are Americans supposed to trust so-called scientists, who take money from the government and then give the government self-serving recommendations? This is already a question with government guidelines regarding cancer. Environmental policy is equally pervasive in scope. Each American’s life is depending on the reliability of “science”.

This disaster will mean more than just environmental policy. This disaster calls into question the ethics of government sponsored research and the wall between science and policy.

UPDATED:

Powerline has more about how the alarmists closed ranks when new data discounted the accepted theory:

The story began when Steve McIntyre, the same researcher who was largely responsible for destroying Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph purporting to show unprecedented warming in the 20th century, turned his attention to a famous article published by Keith Briffa of East Anglia’s CRU in 2000. This article analyzed the diameters of tree rings, including rings from an area called Yamal in Siberia, and conveniently generated another hockey-stick shaped graph. You can read an account of the ensuing controversy here. McIntyre’s work appeared to show that Briffa had cherry-picked trees in order to get the result he was looking for. One fact that this story highlights is that global warming alarmists publish their results in scientific journals, but refuse to make the underlying data publicly available so that the validity of their analyses can be checked.

McIntyre’s revelations caused a firestorm of controversy, in response to which the alarmist community circled its wagons to fend off the threat from an outsider. This process can be clearly seen in the East Anglia emails.

And one of my favorite writers on the web, and smartest, Charles Martin, has much, much more.

The organizational chaos — combined with a widening apathy at the edges of the movement — has produced a growing consensus among local, state and national tea party leaders that for the movement to evolve from the loose conglomeration of fired-up activists who mobilized this summer to register their dissatisfaction with Obama and Congress at town hall protests and marches across the country into a sustainable bloc with the power to shape the GOP and swing elections, it will require the emergence of a national leader, group or structure.

Ned Ryun, president of American Majority, a nonprofit that has conducted organizer-training sessions for many tea party activists, said “the next three to six months” are going to be critical in determining “what’s going to happen with the tea party movement. Are they going to be a bunch of fingers, or are they going to come together to be a fist?”

The diagnosis is wrong. Why will someone have to be in charge? The movement has done fine and no one is in charge of the Tea Parties now. The national organizations could be best described as facilitators and supporters.

Do they want to be in charge of the Tea Party movement? I don’t even know. So I contacted Freedom Works to find out. Here’s what Press Secretary Adam Brandon said:

“FreedomWorks is looking to facilitate the Tea Party in any way that we can. We were never looking to own or control it. The focus needs to be on the issues at hand.”

And then, I contacted American’s For Prosperity Director of Membership and Online Strategy Erik Telford, who has been heavily involved with the Tea Party movement and asked him if AFP would like to be in charge of the Tea Party movement [Full Disclosure: AFP has sponsored me to go to some workshops and I won their 2009 Award for Online Excellence]. Erik said, “No, the Tea Parties are a grassroots, bottom-up movement. We feel privileged to be a part of it.”

Asking the “who’s in charge” questions about the Tea Party movement is to fundamentally misunderstand conservatives. Conservatives do not like being told what to do. The notion of subsuming self-interest for “the greater good” is anathema to them. That makes replicating the Borg-like work of ACORN and Moveon.org organizations nearly impossible on the right. When conservatives see a goal, they’ll take 50 roads to get there. The left will get on the Huffington Post highway and ride along together.

Because of the uniqueness of the conservative activists, there has been some jostling. Impassioned individuals, some with exotic backgrounds like paralegal or college student as examples, were thrust into the spotlight in their respective cities. No training. No experience. Boom! Life transformed in an instant by an internal feeling and desire to get the country going the right direction. Some of these patriots were unprepared for what it all meant. Others have grown and shone in their new-found roles.

And now, the movement as a whole is morphing. Without giving away details, I know of grassroots planning that includes going after corruption, tackling voter fraud and filling precinct chairs. New organizations are growing out of the Tea Party movement and it is all grassroots work.

The national conservative organizations have been trying to help–give training, give funding for venues, give advice for growing organizations. They have been invaluable, background players in a emotionally-charged, fired-up grassroots phenomenon.

The Tea Party movement isn’t imploding. It’s maturing. And that’s a good thing. There’s lots of work to be done. So now that everyone has found a like-minded community, well, the real work begins. So new outgrowths will sprout to fill the many needs out there. That’s what’s happening now.

Also, Sarah reveals a secret her husband Frank of IMAO would rather no one knows.

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Doc Zero over at HotAir’s Greenroom (who is this incredible writer?!) says this:

The media has treated Palin’s book like the mirrored scroll from “Kung Fu Panda”: every reviewer sees themselves reflected in its pages. Imagine a mainstream news magazine trying to portray any liberal woman as a lightweight, by using a photo of her in running shorts to tease its review of her major new book. Running a book review by someone who admits to skipping the last third of the book is not an insult to Sarah Palin, who was not writing for an audience of lazy media hacks. It’s an insult to the audience… including liberal readers of the Washington Post with the intellectual clarity to desire an understanding of those who eagerly devoured every single page. Palin is a phenomenon, and honest liberals would be well-advised to read her work and understand her appeal, just as conservatives should read “Dreams From My Father” to understand the mind of Bill Ayers.

The careless, sloppy disdain of the Left’s reaction to “Going Rogue” is almost as strong an argument for Palin’s politics as anything contained within its pages. The absolute lack of care and competence from the government that ran up a $12 trillion national debt is astonishing. Months of dithering over Afghanistan strategy, with American troops under fire, ends with a painfully unqualified Commander-in-Chief wailing that he wants a new set of options. The politicization of national defense ends in the absurd spectacle of a civilian trial for illegal enemy combatants… subcontracting national security to trial lawyers, and a randomly-selected pool of 12 people who never heard of 9/11.

He continues. You must read the whole thing.

The liberal establishment can barely contain their contempt for the average American life. Common sense is scorned in favor of high-minded theories. The bitterness coming from the left will only increase as President Obama, Congress and the SEIU enforcers put into place their liberal utopia and it fails utterly (as it is doomed to do because liberal policy is all theoretical and ignores little truths like self-interest and human nature).

Liberals will look, act and sound like tripping LSD Dead Head groupies as President Obama and the Democrats in Congress fail. Liberals will see things that aren’t there. Reality will cease to have meaning for them. It’s already happening. Andrew Sullivan is only the first of many to completely lose rational thought in the face of abject ideological failure.

The fresh conservative breeze Sarah Palin represents blows all those theories away. Sarah Palin stands on reality. God, family, country. Baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and …. well, Honda, I guess. She’s a “bitter clinger”. She’s prays. She births. She runs. She works. She’s the average American that libs don’t want to believe exist. And yet, there she is in all her glory. And in the face of normal, the left has come completely unhinged–ranting, skin crawling, tripping their way to a complete psychotic break.

Andrew Sullivan is only the first and most obvious. This will get worse.

Monday’s episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” drew a 8.7 household rating and 13 share — the best since Oprah had the entire Osmond family on the show in 2007.

That means Palin also topped Oprah’s heavily viewed interviews with Whitney Houston at the start of the season.

Sarah Palin causes a press tsunami. Even Andrew Sullivan can’t absorb it all, poor dear. Fans wait breathlessly in lines for Sarah.

Maureen Dowd is predictably churlish. She’s defensive about her elite, insider status [humor, Sarah, make fun of these empty pumps, they can't take humor]:

“We felt our very normalcy, our status as ordinary Americans,” she writes, “could be a much-needed fresh breeze blowing into Washington, D.C.”

It is also real hard to be a real, ordinary, hard-working American if you are part of “what used to be called ‘mainstream’ national media,” as Sarah scornfully writes. “The time has come to acknowledge that it is counterfeit objectivity the liberal media try to sell consumers,” she says. “A period in the great American experiment has passed.”

I was beginning to panic. I pored over the book to see if there was anything that I shared in common with this apotheosis of traditional American values.

Let me answer that for you: No. You have nothing in common with Sarah. Now that that’s solved…

Sarah Palin causes serious heartburn.

Of all the infuriating aspects of the decision to transfer five 9/11 war criminals to civilian federal court, the one that grates most is the contention that the Obama administration is finally moving forward after “eight years of delay” — as Attorney General Eric Holder put it at his Friday press conference — during which the Bush administration managed to complete only three military-commission trials.

This is chutzpah writ large. The principal reason there were so few military trials is the tireless campaign conducted by leftist lawyers to derail military tribunals by challenging them in the courts. Many of those lawyers are now working for the Obama Justice Department. That includes Holder, whose firm, Covington & Burling, volunteered its services to at least 18 of America’s enemies in lawsuits they brought against the American people. (During 2007 alone, Covington contributed more than 3,000 hours of free, top-flight legal assistance to our enemy detainees.)

Read everything from Andy McCarthy about this. And listen to this podcast to get all the background from McCarthy.

There is no defense for moving the trial to federal, civilian court in NYC. Jim Geraghty pulls some testimony from Eric Holder’s testimony today:

Sen. Charles Grassley (R., Iowa): “I don’t think you can say that failure to convict is not an option, when we have juries in this country.”

Attorney General Eric Holder: I have thought about that possibility. Congress has passed legislation that would not allow the release of these individuals in this country. If there is not a successful conclusion to this trial, that would not mean that this person would be released into this country . . .

So, no matter what, KSM is going to be convicted and/or held? And how much money is going to be spent on the show trial?

Instapundit puts forth the theory that this is all a diversion to distract from the stealth care bill–Harry Reid is trying to bring the bill up for debate.

A distraction? An attempt to “regain moral stature”. A bone thrown to leftists?

Technically, the debt hit the new high yesterday, but it was posted on the Treasury Department website just after 3:00 p.m. ET today. The exact calculation of the debt is a 16-digit tongue-twister and red-ink tsunami: $12,031,299,186,290.07

This latest milestone in the ever-rising journey of the National Debt comes less than eight months after it hit $11 trillion for the first time. The latest high-point is not unexpected, considering the federal deficit for the just-ended 2009 fiscal year hit an all-time high at $1.42-trillion – more than triple the previous year’s record high.

Much of the increase in the deficit and debt is attributed to government spending outpacing revenue – both exacerbated by the recession and the government response to it – including hundreds of billions in bailouts and stimulus spending and tax cuts along with decreased tax revenues due to rising unemployment.

And now, President Obama is talking about “getting the deficit under control” even as he’s pushing for a vast new entitlement program. Health care will drive up the debt [and be a disaster to boot] and deficit and President Obama has the nerve about cutting down government debt. Even the Chinese see the folly and they’re communist.

Do you see a way for President Obama to get out of this self-created mess? He created the stimulus to pay off constituencies which created mountains of debt. And he promised the middle class he wouldn’t raise their taxes. And he wants to pass health care to appease the hard left socialists. So many promises.

Meanwhile, the interest on this money accrues and the dollar loses value. Tax revenues will continue to decline because of all the people out of work. It’s only the press that’s keeping President Obama’s hope and change alive. How long can that last?

And a pre-review review:

And for those of you who think I’m hijacking John Hawkin’s righteous right wing rantings, consider this payback for all the ranking hot girl pieces he’s done.

Edward Cullen is teh hawt. That is all.

Jim Hoft says: “Maybe Levi should call Cindy Sheehan to find out how this story ends.”

Indeed. And I feel as sick watching him in the exploit-cycle as I felt watching Sheehan. It is as though neither of them are self-aware enough to know they’re being used. At the same time, their messages are so rank, that it’s difficult to feel sorry for them.

And Jules Crittendon notes how irrelevant Sarah Palin still is and has this comment on the polls:

It’s not so much that only 23 percent like her, or that 38 percent don’t like her, but that after going through the wringer as the designated target in a presidential campaign and being kicked around ever since, she still has 37 percent who haven’t heard enough or are undecided. That’s a pretty big soft area to work on over the next couple of years, while Obama keeps doing what he’s doing to his own numbers. As I heard some commentator remark the other day, a lot of people thought Ronald Reagan was a fringe joke around this time in Jimmy Carter’s presidency, too. Ball’s in her court.

I’d just like to point out that independents in New Jersey and Virginia overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama a year ago. Now, they gave conservatives huge wins. The independents are fickle pickles. It’s kinda cool to Palin hate, but that will change as Obama’s policies get less popular.

I have more on Sarah Palin’s recent interviews here. [Oh, here's Rush's transcript, by the way.] Decided to give old Ricky Hollywood his own post. It will be one of the last ones he gets.

Also, I find this statement by John Zieglar amusing: “For many reasons, this is by far the best book and greatest literary achievement by a political figure in my lifetime.”

I am all for effusive praise, but come on. I found those sorts of reviews of Obama’s books embarrassing. This is weird, too. But John has his reasons for being so enthusiastic. He says:

Among other things, we discover that Sarah Palin has a ridiculously good memory. People who know me say that I have an amazing ability to recall events and I have written two books, but I was blown away by the level of detail in this project, which encompasses her entire life. Since the timing of Going Rogue did not allow for massive amounts of time and resources to be put into research it had to all be put together — in incredibly short order — by Palin’s own memory and notes. The notion that numerous “news” outlets thirsting to find inaccuracies have yet to find one of major significance (no, a disagreement over the definition of “vetting” does not count) may to be the greatest testament to the book’s remarkable credibility.

We’ll see. I have the book sitting here. Received it today and will read it and review it.

In the meantime, I’ll be thankful that my kids aren’t yet dating age.

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