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Tony Cole, a key player in a patronage scandal involving Cook County Board President Todd Stroger, was sentenced today to 60 days in the DuPage County Jail.

Cole was convicted in December of violating his bail bond conditions in a DuPage County domestic violence case. At the same time, he was acquitted of battery, obstruction and resisting a peace officer charges. He was taken into custody immediately after his sentence was delivered today.

Cole, 30, was charged with the four misdemeanors in September 2008
after appearing in court on charges of domestic battery for allegedly
hitting a former girlfriend in the face.

The bail bond charge stemmed from being ordered by a judge not to have
any contact with his former girlfriend. On the day of the domestic
violence hearing, Cole argued with the woman in a hallway at the
courthouse and tried to stop her from going into a courtroom, according
to trial testimony.

Cole pleaded guilty last year to the initial domestic battery charge and was placed on a year’s supervision.

– Art Barnum

Technorati Tags: Art Barnum, Bail, bail bond, barnum, battery, battery charge, board, board president, bond, case, charge, chicago, Cole, Cook, cook county board, courtroom, crime, December, Domestic Battery, domestic violence case, Dupage County, dupage county jail, former girlfriend, girlfriend, Hallway, Jail, Misdemeanors, News, obstruction, officer, patronage, Peace, peace officer, player, Politics, president todd, President Todd Stroger, scandal, supervision, time, today, todd stroger, Tony Cole, trial testimony, violence, woman, year

A heated tossup race for the Democratic nomination for governor escalated along racial lines today as Gov. Pat Quinn and Comptroller Dan Hynes traded charges of incompetence fueled by the scandal at Burr Oak cemetery and a TV ad featuring the late Mayor Harold Washington.

Quinn was joined by U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush today to criticize Hynes, the state’s three-term comptroller. Quinn alleged that Hynes knew for years about disinterred human remains at Burr Oak, an African-American cemetery near Alsip.

Hynes, however, said Quinn is “trying to fan the flames” of anger in the black community over the cemetery issue to keep his job as governor.

More from Rick Pearson and Monique Garcia in Clout Street on chicagotribune.com

Click HERE for a WGN-TV report on this story.

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SPRINGFIELD — House Republican leader Tom Cross today called for limits on how much legislative leaders and political party campaign committees can give to candidates in general elections, saying it was a necessary change that Democrats refused to put into a new state reform law.

The legislation was unveiled at the Capitol just a week before the Feb. 2 primary as Republicans try to show voters this year how they differ with Democrats on reforming the way elections are paid for in scandal-ridden Illinois politics. Democrats control state government and the Republicans are looking to regain relevance for the first time in years.

More from Michelle Manchir in Clout Street on chicagotribune.com

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University of Illinois trustees will have less direct oversight of university purchases and contracts after voting this afternoon to raise the dollar amounts at which their approval is needed.

The change is one of several the board has taken in rethinking how it operates in the wake of an admissions scandal last year that highlighted how some former board members meddled in day-to-day operations.

Chairman Christopher Kennedy said he hoped the action, following a
prior change to halve the number of board committees, would signal to
prospective presidential candidates that the board will be more
hands-off.

Kennedy was re-elected today to chair the board for another year.

“We want to keep our board and any other subsequent boards from
overreaching,” Kennedy said. “One way the board can overreach is by
steering contracts … It is no way to run a large and complex
organization.

“This is a great way to signal to the pool of candidates looking at
this (president) job that this board has no intention of micromanaging.”

Under the new policy, board authorization will be required for
professional contracts of at least $1 million a year, up from $100,000;
purchases of supplies of at least $1 million, up from $200,000; capital
projects of at least $5 million, up from $2 million; and construction
contracts of $2.5 million, up from $500,000.

That means significantly fewer contracts will require board action.
While 41 professional services contracts required approval during the
last three years under the old policy, only eight would require it
under the new one. For construction contracts, of the 147 approved by
the board in the last three years, only 30 would need it under the new
limits.

Andy Shaw, executive director of the Better Government Association,
criticized the change, calling it “the wrong message to send at the
wrong time.”

“This is the school embarrassed and discredited by the (admissions)
scandal. For at least the next year, when trying to repair their
reputation, they should have more oversight rather than less. It is a
mistake,” Shaw said. “From the standpoint of good government and from
the standpoint of a taxpaying resident of the state, I would be much
more comfortable if these trustees were paying closer attention to the
tax dollars.”

The new amounts are similar to those at other Big 10 universities, some
of which require no board approval, according to a survey conducted by
U. of I. But the U. of I. will now have higher thresholds that those at
Illinois’ other public universities, based on an informal survey done
by Southern Illinois University two years ago.

“This is not a time to worry about what the other Big 10 schools are
doing. They are not Illinois. We need closer scrutiny because we have
collectively lost the confidence of the public,” Shaw said.

Interim President Stan Ikenberry said the board won’t be abdicating its
oversight because it still will be notified of contracts approved by
the campuses.

The former board members, most of whom resigned last year, lowered the
dollar amounts in 2005. For example, they reduced the amount needed for
approval of professional services, such as legal and consulting work,
from $250,000 to $100,000. The changes approved Thursday bring the
amounts to levels higher than they were prior to 2005.

“The amount of things that were brought to the board was just too
much,” said trustee Ed McMillan, one of three board members retained
from the prior group. “Previously, the board had less confidence in
delegating to the decision makers at the university level.”

He said there still will be board control: “We will also have the
opportunity, if we have any concern about a particular area, to
challenge them.”

– Jodi S. Cohen

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Gov. Pat Quinn signed a measure into law today that overhauls the way cemeteries are regulated in Illinois, a move brought about by the scandal at Burr Oak cemetery and one that officials say could ultimately shutter the troubled burial site.

State officials said the changes mark the first significant regulations imposed on an industry that has historically operated with little oversight. Employees at Burr Oak, near Alsip, were accused of digging up bodies and reselling plots for profit.

“We’d like to think this is an isolated incident (but) we don’t know because no one’s been watching,” said Sen. Donne Trotter, a ChicagoChicago reviews Democrat who sponsored the measure and who also has family buried at Burr Oak. “We cannot legislate morality, but as lawmakers … it is our responsibility and our duty to ensure that those that provide services in this state operate under regulations, operate with oversight.”

The new law moves all cemetery oversight into one regulatory agency under Quinn, removing a small portion of responsibility from state Comptroller Dan Hynes, Quinn’s opponent in the Democratic governor primary. The comptroller’s office previously had oversight of financial auditing of privately owned cemeteries.

The new regulations will require cemetery owners, managers and customer-service employees to be licensed and undergo continuing education courses. Cemeteries will be required to keep burial maps, which will be stored in a database maintained by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

The department also will be able to conduct audits and issue fines of up to $10,000 for violations ranging from poor grounds upkeep or other conduct deemed unprofessional.

Because the department has the ability to look into past practices, director Brent Adams said that means the state could close Burr Oak.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, whose office first brought the scandal to light, said investigators are still sorting out records but there are concerns the cemetery is over capacity. He said his office has suggested the current cemetery operators slow the pace of burials as the investigation continues.

“Especially at this cemetery, there’s no room for error any more,” Dart said.

–Monique Garcia

Click HERE for a WGN-TV report on this story.

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The Tribune’s Clout Street blog reports: SPRINGFIELD — New regulations in the wake of last summer’s Burr Oak Cemetery would be put in place under legislation the Illinois House sent Gov. Pat Quinn today.

Cemetery owners, managers and customer service employees would have to be licensed, and the regulatory agency would be granted power to conduct audits as well as issue fines of up to $10,000 for various reasons such as poor grounds upkeep or failing to keep burial maps.

The Burr Oak scandal broke last summer when workers were accused of digging up bodies and reselling burial plots.

Get the full story on Clout Street.

Technorati Tags: 4400 W. 127th Street, Alsip, IL, agency, alsip, Audits, blog, burial, burial plots, Burr Oak, burr oak cemetery, Cemetery, chicago, clout, Clout Street, crime, customer, customer service employees, Gov, House, illinois, issue fines, Legislation, maps, new, News, Pat, Pat Quinn, place, Politics, Power, Quinn, regulatory agency, scandal, service, SPRINGFIELD, Summer, today, Tribune, upkeep, wake

While most global warming-obsessed media have either ignored or downplayed the significance of the growing ClimateGate scandal, the Wall Street Journal has been on top of this story since it first broke two weeks ago.

On Thursday, Journal editorial page deputy editor Daniel Henninger penned a piece that should be an absolute must-read for all the so-called journalists in America that have either intentionally boycotted this controversy or have participated in hiding its seriousness from the public.

Called "Climategate: Science Is Dying," the article exposed some inconvenient truths far more ominous than anything in Nobel Laureate Al Gore’s award winning schlockumentary:

Surely there must have been serious men and women in the hard sciences who at some point worried that their colleagues in the global warming movement were putting at risk the credibility of everyone in science. The nature of that risk has been twofold: First, that the claims of the climate scientists might buckle beneath the weight of their breathtaking complexity. Second, that the crudeness of modern politics, once in motion, would trample the traditions and culture of science to achieve its own policy goals. With the scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, both have happened at once. [...]

What is happening at East Anglia is an epochal event. As the hard sciences—physics, biology, chemistry, electrical engineering—came to dominate intellectual life in the last century, some academics in the humanities devised the theory of postmodernism, which liberated them from their colleagues in the sciences. [...]

This has harsh implications for the credibility of science generally. Hard science, alongside medicine, was one of the few things left accorded automatic stature and respect by most untrained lay persons. But the average person reading accounts of the East Anglia emails will conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and "messy" as, say, gender studies. [...]

The East Anglians’ mistreatment of scientists who challenged global warming’s claims—plotting to shut them up and shut down their ability to publish—evokes the attempt to silence Galileo. The exchanges between Penn State’s Michael Mann and East Anglia CRU director Phil Jones sound like Father Firenzuola, the Commissary-General of the Inquisition.

For three centuries Galileo has symbolized dissent in science. In our time, most scientists outside this circle have kept silent as their climatologist fellows, helped by the cardinals of the press, mocked and ostracized scientists who questioned this grand theory of global doom. Even a doubter as eminent as Princeton’s Freeman Dyson was dismissed as an aging crank.

As NewsBusters reported in March, the New York Times Magazine wrote a lengthy article about Dyson which included his skeptical view of global warming. This led the fear-mongering website Climate Progress, and its fear-mongerer in chief Joe Romm, to come down on the Times "for publishing an extended, largely favorable profile of Freeman Dyson, a true climate crackpot."

Readers should also recall how Dr. S. Fred Singer, the esteemed Professor Emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia, was disgracefully attacked in an ABC "World News" hit piece in March 2008.

But I digress:

Beneath this dispute is a relatively new, very postmodern environmental idea known as "the precautionary principle." As defined by one official version: "When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically." The global-warming establishment says we know "enough" to impose new rules on the world’s use of carbon fuels. The dissenters say this demotes science’s traditional standards of evidence.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s dramatic Endangerment Finding in April that greenhouse gas emissions qualify as an air pollutant—with implications for a vast new regulatory regime—used what the agency called a precautionary approach. The EPA admitted "varying degrees of uncertainty across many of these scientific issues." Again, this puts hard science in the new position of saying, close enough is good enough. One hopes civil engineers never build bridges under this theory. [...]

If the new ethos is that "close-enough" science is now sufficient to achieve political goals, serious scientists should be under no illusion that politicians will press-gang them into service for future agendas. Everyone working in science, no matter their politics, has an [sic] stake in cleaning up the mess revealed by the East Anglia emails. Science is on the credibility bubble. If it pops, centuries of what we understand to be the role of science go with it.

And, if we had an honest press versus a news media filled with political activists, this would be the tenor of the discussion since ClimateGate first broke.

Technorati Tags: Al Gore, America, article, average person, biology chemistry, climate, climate research unit, climate scientists, ClimateGate, credibility, Daniel Denninger, Daniel Henninger, deputy editor, Dyson, east anglia, East Anglians, editor daniel, everyone, Freeman, Freeman Dyson, Galileo, hard science, intellectual life, Joe Romm, Journal, journal editorial, lay persons, March, Michael Mann, nobel laureate, Phil Jones, piece, policy goals, postmodernism, press, Professor Emeritus, Quot, risk, S. Fred Singer, scandal, science, seriousness, some inconvenient truths, stature, theory, Times, Wall Street, Wall Street Journal, warming, world

Fox News’s Brit Hume Monday said the growing ClimateGate scandal suggests manmade global warming may be a fraud.

As NewsBusters has been reporting since e-mail messages from the British Climatic Research Unit were first revealed ten days ago, the only television news network that has been regularly informing viewers about this matter has been the Fox News Channel.

On Monday, Fox’s "Special Report" continued this trend, and brought Hume on to offer his thoughts (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Story Balloon):

BRET BAIER, HOST: Well, let’s get some thoughts now from senior political analyst Brit Hume on the scandal some are calling ClimateGate.

Good evening, Brit.

BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Hi, Bret. As you heard Wendell Goler’s report, a large collection of e-mails exchanged among weather researchers at the University of East Anglia in England have gotten out and caused a scandal. The reason that university’s Climate Research Unit matters is that it has been heavily relied upon by the U.N. in reaching its alarmist conclusions about the threat of global warming. The reason it’s a scandal is that the e-mails vividly portray leading scientists there scheming to suppress or discredit data and analysis contrary to their dire predictions.

The whole idea that the earth is warming dangerously and that man, by burning carbon fuels is the cause, rests on computerized projections of future temperatures based on vast amounts of previously observed climate data. But there’s a huge problem.

There has been no apparent increase in global temperatures over the past 11 years, and the computerized climate models failed to predict this and the global warming alarmists can’t explain it. The obvious conclusion would be that there’s something wrong with the computer models.

Now it has come out that the original raw data used to create these models has been destroyed or otherwise disposed of. The response of the alarmists to these revelations has been that the e-mails were taken out of context and that the destruction of all that raw data was done for space reasons. There’s a one-word answer to all of that — Please. Bret.

BAIER: Brit, do you think that these revelations have the potential to slow or even stop the push for action on climate change?

HUME: Well, the momentum for that was already declining, because global warming, climate change has been dropping lower and lower in people’s list of priorities for a long time now, and doubts about whether man is causing it and about the whole theory of it have been rising. So this can only further that and only add to the sense that this is not a politically urgent matter, and that perhaps it may all even be a fraud.

BAIER: All right, Brit. Thanks.

HUME: You bet.

In the end, if we had an honest news media rather than the advocates so prevalent on television and in print, such sentiments concerning this scandal would be quite commonplace.

Of course, the same would be true if climate change was a conservative agenda, and the Republicans controlled the White House and Congress.

Alas, no matter how you slice it, integrity in journalism is just as lacking as it is within the community of scientists advancing the global warming myth.

How sad for all of us.

Technorati Tags: amp, BAIER, Bret Baier, Brit, Brit Hume, change, climate, ClimateGate, fox, Fox News Channel, fraud, Global Warming, matter, Monday, News, Quot, report, Research, scandal, Special Report, television, Unit, video, warming

Ben Stein made an indirect reference to the ClimateGate e-mail scandal during a face-off with Democratic strategist James Carville on Wednesday’s Situation Room: “The truth is, we’ve now got a lot of data coming out that the scientific community who are on the side of anthropogenic global warming were cooking the data and were suppressing data to those requesting their data.”

Stein and Carville appeared on the program’s regular “Strategy Session” segment 46 minutes into the 4 pm Eastern hour, less than an hour before CNN aired a slanted report on the e-mail scandal. Substitute anchor Suzanne Malveaux first raised President Obama’s upcoming trip to Copenhagen for the UN Climate Change Conference with the Democrat: “Obviously, this is a political issue. This is up to Congress. What can the President do on this issue?”

Carville went on the offensive out of the gate: “Well, unfortunately, I hope I’m wrong, but not very much, and I hope that talk radio and the pollution lobby are right that global warming is not a problem and 940 peer-reviewed scientific articles are wrong. That’s about all we can hope for because, right now, I have to tell you, that the pollution lobby and talk radio is winning this battle, and the will in the United States to do something about this is not what where I think it should be. But that’s the reality of the political situation as I see it right now.”

Stein rebuked his opponent for his labeling, and made his first reference to ClimateGate:

STEIN: Well, calling the people who want to keep Americans free to use the kind of energy they want to use the ‘pollution lobby’ is a wild smear…But it’s not the pollution lobby- it’s a lobby for the truth. The truth is that the global temperature peaked around 1998. It’s not gotten any hotter. Instead, it’s gotten cooler. The truth is that there have been periods in the past, 1,000 years ago, 2,500 years ago when it was warmer than it is now when there was no manmade burning of carbon. The truth is that we don’t know the exact interaction between all those events and effects and what they do to the weather….The truth is, we’ve now got a lot of data coming out that the scientific community who are on the side of anthropogenic global warming were cooking the data and were suppressing data to those requesting their data. So, I think the whole thing of fighting global warming may be based on a false premise. Maybe it isn’t, but the fact is we just don’t know at this point.

For the remainder of the segment, Carville and Stein mainly stuck to their talking points on the climate debate:

MALVEAUX: Well, the truth is, too, is that Americans are divided politically over this issue. If you look at the poll, Washington Post/ABC News here, among Republicans, 54 percent believe that global warming is really happening, but Democrats, 86 percent believe it is really- it is taking place here.

CARVILLE: Look, again, I hope that talk radio and the pollution lobby is right, because I- but I’m afraid that 950-something peer-reviewed scientific articles and almost the entirety of the non-paid- for by polluters- the people had studied this- think that this is- this climate change is real. I hope they’re wrong for the sake of my children, and it seems as though that they spent a lot of money and have been very successful here.

MALVEAUX: Well, what do you make of that, Ben? Do you think it’s just a lobbying effort?

STEIN: There are huge- no, there are huge numbers of scientists who are questioning that. When you say 950 peer-reviewed articles. We now learned that the peers are in a kind of cabal and not all of them- some of them are in a kind of a cabal to suppress any information that challenges the consensus on global warming and the man-made effects on the climate. We- there are many, many scientists not paid for by the energy companies. In fact, the energy companies have pretty much have backed off and washed their hands of this. They find they just don’t want to question the conventional wisdom on this. This is being done- this questioning about the effects of man-made activity on the climate is being done by brave, independent souls, and it’s not just proved.

MALVEAUX: We could debate whether or not this is real or not, but I covered Bush for eight years, and he said that global warming did not exist, that science didn’t back it up. But here is a poll that shows that a lot more people are actually agreeing with the former president. Three and a half years ago, 76 percent of Republicans believed it was happening. Well, now, it’s down to 54 percent. Take a look at the independents: 86 percent thought it was happening. Now, it’s down to 71 percent. Democrats, 92 percent. Now, it is down to 86 percent. Is that not going make it even harder for the President to convince the rest of the world that we need some sort of global initiative here for climate change?

CARVILLE: Yes.

MALVEAUX: Climate change?

CARVILLE: The answer is yes.

MALVEAUX: What does he do?

CARVILLE: Yes, the pollution lobby is winning. They’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars, and they’re winning.

MALVEAUX: So, what does he do? What does the President do?

CARVILLE: The point is that every peer-reviewed scientific article says that this is true. (Stein unintelligible in the background)

MALVEAUX: If you could give him some sort of advice, could you advise the President? What does he need to do if he’s going to change this and he’s going to turn this around, or is it hopeless?

CARVILLE: Well, I don’t know if it’s hopeless. Still, you got a majority of the people believe in that, and in the end, scientific truth is going to win out. But right now, you got to say- ExxonMobil was paying tens of thousands of dollars for any, quote, ‘scientists,’ unquote, that would dispute these facts. In over a period of time, this is building up, and they’re winning, and I don’t know why you’re not happy about it, Ben.

STEIN: But, you know, James, with all due respect, I hate to say this, because I respect you very much and I always love it when I’m on with you, but you just made that up about ExxonMobil. They’re not paying tens of thousands of dollars to any scientists-

CARVILLE: Sure they did. They did.

STEIN: Who will dispute global warming. There’s a cabal of global warming- anthropogenic global warming scientists who are suppressing anyone questioning them. It’s not the pollution lobby versus the clean air lobby. It’s the truth lobby versus those who want to suppress the truth lobby. Look, I don’t like pollution either. I don’t like these little micro-particles that go up in the air and they get in my lungs and they cause cancer. But whether or not- and I’m all for cleansing the air of as much as possible- but whether or not man-made activity is changing the climate of the earth, that is very much in dispute, and whether or not we should have giant global policies based on suppressing something which may be a hoax, that’s very much up in the air.

CARVILLE: It’s very much not up in the air by the scientific community. But again, nobody is suppressing you. You’re right here saying this, and you all are winning. The scientific community and the evidence is losing, and that happens, you know? That happens.

STEIN: James, I’m not trying to get something published in a peer review journal.

CARVILLE: I know.

STEIN: If I were trying to get it published in a peer review journal, they wouldn’t let me.

MALVEAUX: But we do know that the president is-

CARVILLE: They got tenure- go ahead, sorry.

MALVEAUX: But we do know the President is going to Copenhagen. It’s going to be at the beginning of the summit. He’s already received some criticism that he’s not going to be able to get a lot done because he’s going to be there on day one of the summit as opposed to the end. But, clearly, speaking with senior administration officials today, they say at least we’re going to try to get some momentum with this debate and perhaps this move forward. So, that’s where we’re going to leave it right there.

Technorati Tags: Ben, Ben Stein, CARVILLE, change, climate, climate change conference, ClimateGate, CNN, community, COPENHAGEN, democratic strategist, E Mail, energy, environment, face off, global temperature, Global Warming, global warming is not a problem, indirect reference, IPCC, issue, James Carville, kind, lobby, lot, MALVEAUX, obama, percent, political situation, pollution, President Obama, radio, reference, Regulation, scandal, scientific articles, situation, situation room, strategy session, Suzanne Malveaux, Talk, talk radio, The Situation Room, truth, United States, warming

Will this be the week when the MSM wall of silence finally breaks on the topic of Climategate? Judging from the cracks already developing in that wall, that could well be the case.

A big crack in that wall occurred yesterday when George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week brought up the topic of Climategate for discussion with his guests. Also yesterday, the readers of Newsday were finally introduced to this scandal via this Associated Press storyToy Story reviews. The story headline alone has a sense of novelty about Climategate despite the fact readers of the blogosphere have known about it for over a week: ‘Climategate’ alleges global warming hoax. 

The phrase "been there, done that" will roll around in the heads of many web surfers as they read the the AP story. That could be because the AP story is from November 21 but yesterday was the first appearance of the story in Newsday…and now that newspaper is forced to play catchup:

 LONDON – LONDON (AP) — Computer hackers  have broken into a server at a well-respected climate change research center in Britain and posted hundreds of private e-mails and documents online — stoking debate over whether some scientists have overstated the case for man-made climate change.

This is breaking news to those Long Island folks relying solely on Newsday and the TV networks (except FOX) for the news. However, for most of the rest of us on the web, 10 day old news is stale news.

The University of East Anglia, in eastern England, said in a statement Saturday that the hackers had entered the server and stolen data at its Climatic Research Unit, a leading global research center on climate change. The university said police are investigating the theft of the information, but could not confirm if all the materials posted online are genuine.

Note to Newsday readers late to this scandal: Saturday refers to Saturday November 21, the day after the Climategate news broke, not Saturday November 28, the day before this story finally appeared in Newsweek.

More than a decade of correspondence between leading British and U.S. scientists is included in about 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents posted on Web sites following the security breach last week.

Some climate change skeptics and bloggers claim the information shows scientists have overstated the case for global warming, and allege the documents contain proof that some researchers have attempted to manipulate data.

Yawn! Been there, done that. I could post the rest of the story from Newsday but it would only bore readers of NewsBusters as well as anyone who has visited  a few of the scores of other sites on the Web that covered this story over a week ago. 

Meanwhile Newsday and a hole host of other MSM outlets are going to have to play catchup bigtime. So enjoy this story Newsday readers, you haven’t even gotten close yet to the part where the CRU unit in East Anglia performed a document dump on their raw data.

Perhaps the most amusing aspect about the MSM attempting to play Climategate catchup will be to watch Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News shake off his bedazzlement over the recent Obama state dinner and see how well he affects surprise over the "breaking" ClimateGate news when he is finally forced to report on it.

Oh, and Katy Couric and Charlie ("What ACORN Scandal?") Gibson, you two will also be judged on how well you can act surprised by ClimateGate when you report on it for the first time. Bonus points for raised eyebrows and widened eyes.

Technorati Tags: ap computer, ap story, Associated Press, Blogosphere, Brian Williams, Britain, case, catchup, change, Charlie, climate, climate change research, climate change research center, ClimateGate, Climatic Research Unit, computer hackers, Day, east anglia, eastern England, first appearance, GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, global research center, London, london london, Long Island, MSM, News, Newsday, newsday readers, Newsweek, November, Quot, Research, Saturday, scandal, story, story headline, topic, U.S., university of east anglia, wall, wall of silence, Web, web surfers, week, yesterday

Big news on the Climategate front. The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, has issued a major response to the Climategate scandal. As a result a big rift has developed between the IPCC and a delegate to that organization on the topic of Climategate. This is big news, is it not? Does this not sound like a huge news story? Well, guess how many MSM reporters have covered this story? The answer as of this moment is one. ONE!

The sole reporter who went where the rest of the MSM dare not tread was Andrew Revkin, the New York Times environmental reporter, who covered this storyToy Story reviews in his Dot Earth blog. Revkin is hardly what one would call a global warming "denier" or skeptic but to give him credit he will report on breaking climate stories even if contradicts the prevailing MSM agenda on this topic. And his latest report covers both the IPCC chairman’s response as well as the huge rift over Climategate that has now developed as resuult of that scandal:

Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has distributed a statement on the unauthorized disclosure of thousands of e-mail messages and documents involving a variety of contributors to the panel’s reports. One e-mail message from July 8, 2004, particularly related to the workings of the climate panel, has been the subject of much discussion. 

In it, Phil Jones, the  now-embattled head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, the source of the leaked files, discusses several papers that challenge the status quo with  Michael Mann, a longtime colleague from Pennsylvania State University. This is the take-home line, now  reverberating around skeptics’ Web sites: 

I can’t see either of these papers being in the next I.P.C.C. report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!

Here’s Dr. Pachauri’s statement defending the climate panel’s procedures: 

Statement on news reports regarding hacking of the East Anglia University email communications

It is unfortunate that an illegal act of accessing private email communications between scientists who have been involved as authors in I.P.C.C. assessments in the past has led to several questions and concerns. It is important for me to clarify that the I.P.C.C. as a body follows impartial, open and objective assessment of every aspect of climate change carried out with complete transparency. IPCC relies entirely on peer reviewed literature in carrying out its assessment and follows a process that renders it unlikely that any peer reviewed piece of literature, however contrary to the views of any individual author, would be left out. The entire report writing process of the I.P.C.C. is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments. Consequently, there is at every stage full opportunity for experts in the field to draw attention to any piece of literature and its basic findings that would ensure inclusion of a wide range of views. There is, therefore, no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed.

Dr. Pachauri goes on at greater length defending the IPCC peer review process which you can read in the rest of Revkin’s report. However, if it weren’t newsworthy enough that the IPCC chairman has responded to the Climategate scandal at length, it turns out that a delegate of that organization strongly disagrees with the chairman’s assessment of the scandal. 

Here is the reaction to the IPCC chairman’s response to Climategate from Saudi Arabia’s liaison to that organization,  Mohammad Al-Sabban. Note that he does not use vague diplomatic language in his very direct reaction to the position of IPCC chairman:

A lot of damage has already been done to this international scientific body and I do not think the attached response by Dr. Pachauri was convincing enough to remove such a damage.

So there you have it. The IPCC chairman gives a lengthy response to the Climategate and a liaison to that organization claims a lot of damage has been caused by that scandal and is unsatisfied with the excuses provided. And yet the MSM still does not think this worthy of coverage. 

The lengths that the MSM has gone to avoid mentioning Climategate has now entered the realm of the absurd. It is the scandal that dare not speak its name as far as the MSM is concerned. Of course, they risk embarrassing themselves yet again if Climategate explodes as an issue at the Copenhagen summit which President Obama will be attending. Then the MSM, as in the case of the ACORN and Van Jones scandals, will have to go through the embarrassing task of explaining to its readers and viewers what Climategate is all about even though most folks familiar with the Web would have already known all about it…no thanks to their ridiculous non-reporting of this major event.

Oh, and a big round of applause to Andrew Revkin for reporting on all aspects of climate news…including Climategate.  

Technorati Tags: Andrew Revkin, assessment, Chairman, change, climate, ClimateGate, Climatic Research Unit, COPENHAGEN, damage, Denier, Dr. Pachauri, Dr. Rajendra, E Mail, east anglia, Environmental Reporter, huge news, I.P.C.C, Intergovernmental, Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, IPCC, ipcc chairman, K. Pachauri, Kevin, literature, longtime colleague, mail message, mail messages, Michael Mann, Mohammad Al-Sabban, MSM, New York Times, News, organization, panel, pennsylvania state university, Phil Jones, President Obama, process, rajendra, report, Research Unit At The University Of East Anglia, response, Ridiculous Lengths, Saudi Arabia, scandal, skeptic, skeptics, statement, story, unauthorized disclosure, University, university of east anglia, Van Jones

Oops! If the mainstream media was hoping that the Climategate scandal would be limited to the University of East Anglia’s Climate Reasearch Unit (CRU) in Norwich, England, they are out of luck. This scandal has now reared its ugly head on the other side of the globe at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research (NIWA)  which is that nation’s chief climate advisory unit.

Watts Up With That? reposting from New Zealand’s TBR.cc Investigate magazine’s breaking news forum explains this latest development in the widening Climategate scandal: 

The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain’s CRU climate research centre.

In New Zealand’s case, the figures published on NIWA’s website suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century.

A warming trend! This must be serious enough to shout "ManBearPig!"  And here is a NIWA graph of the supposed warming trend:

Here is the caption under that NIWA graph:

Figure 7: Mean annual temperature over New Zealand, from 1853 to 2008 inclusive, based on between 2 (from 1853) and 7 (from 1908) long-term station records. The blue and red bars show annual differences from the 1971 – 2000 average, the solid black line is a smoothed time series, and the dotted [straight] line is the linear trend over 1909 to 2008 (0.92°C/100 years).

Mama, save me! I’m scared! But wait. Watts Up With That? provides us with a very important caveat in the form of another graph:

But analysis of the raw climate data from the same temperature stations has just turned up a very different result:

Gone is the relentless rising temperature trend, and instead there appears to have been a much smaller growth in warming, consistent with the warming up of the planet after the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850.

The revelations are published today in a news alert from The Climate Science Coalition of NZ:

Straight away you can see there’s no slope—either up or down. The temperatures are remarkably constant way back to the 1850s. Of course, the temperature still varies from year to year, but the trend stays level—statistically insignificant at 0.06°C per century since 1850.

Putting these two graphs side by side, you can see huge differences. What is going on?

Yeah? What is going on? Why did NIWA frighten your humble correspondent?

Why does NIWA’s graph show strong warming, but graphing their own raw data looks completely different? Their graph shows warming, but the actual temperature readings show none whatsoever!

Have the readings in the official NIWA graph been adjusted?

It is relatively easy to find out. We compared raw data for each station (from NIWA’s web site) with the adjusted official data, which we obtained from one of Dr Salinger’s colleagues.

Requests for this information from Dr Salinger himself over the years, by different scientists, have long gone unanswered, but now we might discover the truth.

What did we find? First, the station histories are unremarkable. There are no reasons for any large corrections. But we were astonished to find that strong adjustments have indeed been made.

About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend, with only one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original trend.

The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming, as documented below. There is nothing in the station histories to warrant these adjustments and to date Dr Salinger and NIWA have not revealed why they did this.

One station, Hokitika, had its early temperatures reduced by a huge 1.3°C, creating strong warming from a mild cooling, yet there’s no apparent reason for it.

We have discovered that the warming in New Zealand over the past 156 years was indeed man-made, but it had nothing to do with emissions of CO2—it was created by man-made adjustments of the temperature. It’s a disgrace.

NIWA claim their official graph reveals a rising trend of 0.92ºC per century, which means (they claim) we warmed more than the rest of the globe, for according to the IPCC, global warming over the 20th century was only about 0.6°C.

Pardon the interruption here but does anybody else notice how it is the much maligned blogosphere that is doing the detailed footwork that the mainstream media should, but won’t, do? Okay, I return you now to the unfolding Climategate scandal:

NIWA’s David Wratt has told Investigate magazine this afternoon his organization denies faking temperature data and he claims NIWA has a good explanation for adjusting the temperature data upward. Wratt says NIWA is drafting a media response for release later this afternoon which will explain why they altered the raw data.

“Do you agree it might look bad in the wake of the CRU scandal?”

“No, no,” replied Wratt before hitting out at the Climate Science Coalition and accusing them of “misleading” people about the temperature adjustments.

Manipulation of raw data is at the heart of recent claims of corrupt scientific practice in climate science, with CRU’s Phil Jones recently claiming old temperature records collected by his organization were “destroyed” or “lost”, meaning researchers can now only access manipulated data.

So far this New Zealand scandal remains unreported in the American MSM but, to its credit, there is a report on this latest Climategate outbreak across the pond by James Delingpole the UK Telegraph. Meanwhile, if the U.S. media ever pull their ostrich heads out of the sand, they will have a huge amount of catching up to do in this scandal.

Technorati Tags: advisory unit, annual temperature, C. Pardon, century, climate, climate data, climate research, climate science, ClimateGate, CRU, David Wratt, Dr Salinger, east anglia, GLOBE, graph, Investigate, linear trend, little ice age, magazine, mainstream, mainstream media, mama, ManBearPig, national institute of water, national institute of water and atmospheric research, national institute of water and atmospheric research niwa, New Zealand, news alert, NIWA, Norwich, norwich england, NZ, Research, scandal, science coalition, side, station, tbr, temperature, temperature trend, trend, ugly head, Unit, university of east anglia, warming, warming trend, Watts, way

Yesterday Brian Williams delivered an NBC Nightly News report about President Obama attending the Copenhagen global warming summit. Guess what hot topic was left untouched? If you had guessed Climategate you would have been correct. Not only Williams but also the other TV networks, with the exception of FOX News, have completely ignored what is considered to be the biggest scientific scandal in history. However, new Climategate revelationsRevelations reviews made by the Canada Free Press about a White House connection to the scandal will soon make it much more difficult (and ridiculous) for the networks to ignore.

Canada Free Press editor Judi McLeod and Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball reveal the involvement of White House Science Czar John Holdren (photo) in the Climategate Scandal. The picture presented of Holdren is not a pretty one:

Lift up a rock and another snake comes slithering out from the ongoing University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) scandal, now riding as   “Climategate”.

Obama Science Czar John Holdren is directly involved in CRU’s unfolding Climategate scandal.  In fact, according to files released by a CEU hacker or whistleblower, Holdren is involved in what Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball terms “a truculent and nasty manner that provides a brief demonstration of his lack of understanding, commitment on faith and willingness to ridicule and bully people”. 

An example of Holdren’s nastiness from the CRU files involves the ridicule solar physicists Sally Baliunas and Willie Soon. Here is Dr. Ball’s description of what happened:

I’ve known solar physicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon for a long time. I’ve published articles with Willie and enjoyed extensive communication. I was on advisory committees with them when Sallie suddenly and politely withdrew from the fray. I don’t know if the following events were contributing factors but it is likely.

Baliunas and Soon were authors of excellent work confirming the existence of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from a multitude of sources. Their work challenged attempts to get rid of the MWP because it contradicted the claim by the proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Several scientists challenged the claim that the latter part of the 20th century was the warmest ever. They knew the claim was false, many warmer periods occurred in the past. Michael Mann ‘got rid’ of the MWP with his production of the hockey stick, but Soon and Baliunas were problematic. What better than have a powerful academic destroy their credibility for you? Sadly, there are always people who will do the dirty work.

Such as a certain person destined to become a White House Science Czar? Dr. Ball elaborates:

Indeed, Holdren’s emails show how sincere scientists would be made into raw “entertainment”.

On 16th October 2003 Michael Mann, infamous for his lead in the ‘hockey stick’ that dominated the 2001 IPCC Report, sent an email to people involved in the CRU scandal:

Dear All,

Thought you would be interested in this exchange, which John Holdren of Harvard has been kind enough to pass along…

At the time Holdren was Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy & Director, Program in Science, Technology, & Public Policy, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government.

In an email on October16, 2003 from John Holdren to Michael Mann and Tom Wigley we are told: 

I’m forwarding for your entertainment an exchange that followed from my being quoted in the Harvard Crimson to the effect that you and your colleagues are right and my “Harvard” colleagues Soon and Baliunas are wrong about what the evidence shows concerning surface temperatures over the past millennium. The cover note to faculty and postdocs in a regular Wednesday breakfast discussion group on environmental science and public policy in Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences is more or less self-explanatory.

This is what Holdren sent to the Wednesday Breakfast group:

I append here an e-mail correspondence I have engaged in over the past few days trying to educate a Soon/Baliunas supporter who originally wrote to me asking how I could think that Soon and Baliunas are wrong and Mann et al. are right (a view attributed to me, correctly, in the Harvard Crimson). This individual apparently runs a web site on which he had been touting the Soon/Baliunas position.

The exchange Holdren refers to is a challenge by Nick Schulz editor of Tech Central Station (TCS). On August 9, 2003 Schulz wrote:

In a recent Crimson story on the work of Soon and Baliunas, who have written for my website [1 techcentralstation.com, you are quoted as saying: My impression is that the critics are right. It s unfortunate that so much attention is paid to a flawed analysis, but that’s what happens when something happens to support the political climate in Washington. Do you feel the same way about the work of Mann et. al.? If not why not?

Holdren provides lengthy responses on October 13, 14, and 16 but comments fail to answer Schulz’s questions. After the first response Schulz replies:

I guess my problem concerns what lawyers call the burden of proof. The burden weighs heavily, much more heavily, given the claims on Mann et.al. than it does on Soon/Baliunas. Would you agree?

Of course, Holdren doesn’t agree. He replies:

But, in practice, burden of proof is an evolving thing-it evolves as the amount of evidence relevant to a particular proposition grows.

Dr. Ball elaborates on this "evolving burden of proof" argument by Holdren:

No it doesn’t evolve; it is either on one side or the other. This argument is in line with what has happened with AGW. He then demonstrates his lack of understanding of science and climate science by opting for Mann and his hockey stick over Soon and Baliunas. His entire defense and position devolves to a political position. His attempt to belittle Soon and Baliunas in front of colleagues is a measure of the man’s blindness and political opportunism that pervades everything he says or does.

Schulz provides a solid summary when he writes:

I’ll close by saying I’m willing to admit that, as someone lacking a PhD, I could be punching above my weight. But I will ask you a different but related question. How much hope is there for reaching reasonable public policy decisions that affect the lives of millions if the science upon which those decisions must be made is said to be by definition beyond the reach of those people?

Dr. Ball concludes with this devastating appraisal of John Holdren:

We now know it was deliberately placed beyond the reach of the people by the group that he used to ridicule Soon and Baliunas. Holdren was blinded by his political views, which as his record shows are frightening. One web site synthesizes his position on over-population as follows, “Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A “Planetary Regime” with the power of life and death over American citizens.

Holdren has a long history of seeking total government control. He was involved in the Club of Rome providing Paul Ehrlich with the scientific data in his bet with Julian Simon. Ehrlich lost the bet. Holdren’s behavior in this sorry episode with Soon and Baliunas is too true to form and shows the leopard never changes his spots.

Keep in mind that Holdren as the White House Science Czar has direct input to President Obama on the subject of global warming. Perhaps he will even accompany Obama to the Copenhagen summit. Will anybody in the MSM dare to ask Obama about the Climategate  revelations of data manipulations and suppression of contrary views as well as the involvement of his own Science Czar in this scandal?

A cookie! An oatmeal cookie to the first reporter to dare ask Obama a question about Climategate!

And for Brian Williams, a Five Guys burger (with fries) for asking the same question.

Technorati Tags: Advisory Committees, Brian Williams, Canada, Canadian Climatologist, Central Station, Cfp, claim, climate research unit, ClimateGate, COPENHAGEN, Crimson, CRU, czar, Dr Tim, Dr. Ball, Dr. Tim Ball, east anglia, Exchange, fox news, FREE, Harvard, Heinz Professor, hot topic, House, John, John F Kennedy, John Holdren, McLeod, Michael Mann, MWP, Nastiness, NBC Nightly News, News, news report, Nick Schulz, policy, President Obama, press, report, Sally Baliunas, scandal, science, Solar Physicists, Teresa, Tim Ball, Tom Wigley, Tv Networks, university of east anglia, warming, Washington, White, White House Connection, Willie, work

As NewsBusters has been reporting since the ClimateGate scandal first brokeBroke reviews last Friday, America’s media have either been shamefully ignoring the sensitive information hacked from a British university’s computer system or dishonestly telling the public there’s nothing to it.

If these revelations furthered the global warming myth by implicating skeptical scientists in a conspiracy to adjust temperature data while shutting out opinions contrary to their own, press outlets would likely have their science divisions poring over every e-mail and document available to find the proverbial smoking gun.

Because in this instance any such research could uncover information contrary to the agenda of most news outlets, scientific editors and reporters have abdicated their investigative responsibilities in an obvious attempt to protect policies they support and advocate.

With that in mind, the American Thinker’s Marc Sheppard, clearly doing the media’s job, examined the computer program source code available in what was hacked from this British Climate Research Unit (CRU), and discovered that this scandal is everything the global warming-obsessed media fear:

One can only imagine the angst suffered daily by the co-conspirators, who knew full well that the “Documents” sub-folder of the CRU FOI2009 file contained more than enough probative program source code to unmask CRU’s phantom methodology. 

In fact, there are hundreds of IDL and FORTRAN source files buried in dozens of subordinate sub-folders.  And many do properly analyze and chart maximum latewood density (MXD), the growth parameter commonly utilized by CRU scientists as a temperature proxy, from raw or legitimately normalized data.  Ah, but many do so much more. 

Skimming through the often spaghetti-like code, the number of programs which subject the data to a mixed-bag of transformative and filtering routines is simply staggering.  Granted, many of these “alterations” run from benign smoothing algorithms (e.g. omitting rogue outliers) to moderate infilling mechanisms (e.g. estimating missing station data from that of those closely surrounding).  But many others fall into the precarious range between highly questionable (removing MXD data which demonstrate poor correlations with local temperature) to downright fraudulent (replacing MXD data entirely with measured data to reverse a disorderly trend-line).

In fact, workarounds for the post-1960 “divergence problem”, as described by both RealClimate and Climate Audit, can be found throughout the source code.  So much so that perhaps the most ubiquitous programmer’s comment (REM) I ran across warns that the particular module “Uses ‘corrected’ MXD – but shouldn’t usually plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures.”

What followed was a highly-technical analysis of the source code that likely would be way over most readers’ heads. However, the conclusion was staggering:

Clamoring alarmists can and will spin this until they’re dizzy. The ever-clueless mainstream media can and will ignore this until it’s forced upon them as front-page news, and then most will join the alarmists on the denial merry-go-round.

But here’s what’s undeniable: If a divergence exists between measured temperatures and those derived from dendrochronological data after (circa) 1960 then discarding only the post-1960 figures is disingenuous to say the least. The very existence of a divergence betrays a potential serious flaw in the process by which temperatures are reconstructed from tree-ring density. If it’s bogus beyond a set threshold, then any honest men of science would instinctively question its integrity prior to that boundary. And only the lowliest would apply a hack in order to produce a desired result.

And to do so without declaring as such in a footnote on every chart in every report in every study in every book in every classroom on every website that such a corrupt process is relied upon is not just a crime against science, it’s a crime against mankind.

Indeed, miners of the CRU folder have unearthed dozens of email threads and supporting documents revealing much to loathe about this cadre of hucksters and their vile intentions. This veritable goldmine has given us tales ranging from evidence destruction to spitting on the Freedom of Information Act on both sides of the Atlantic. But the now irrefutable evidence that alarmists have indeed been cooking the data for at least a decade may just be the most important strike in human history.

Indeed, but this raises another question: where are America’s science editors and reporters concerning this matter?

If a software designer, consultant, and business owner in his spare time can uncover this, why can’t America’s leading science periodicals or key "journalists" in this debate?

Is investigative journalism truly dead in this country, or is it only employed to uncover truths that either buttress the media’s view of the world or undermine those that don’t?

Consider that in the past almost two years, we have witnessed the press:

• Ignore important facts about a presidential candidate in order to get him elected
• Ignore or gloss over important facts about a President’s appointees to get them approved by Congress
• Ignore important facts about a President’s "czars"
• Ignore important facts about a major "community organizing" group 

In the case of the latter two issues, conservative bloggers, talk show hosts, and Fox News were alone in coverage until the mainstream media eventually came aboard kicking and screaming.

Now, revelations about some of the country’s leading climate scientists and activists — who have ties to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as the ear of the White House and leading members of Congress — are going largely ignored or soft-soaped.

Such is transpiring weeks before a major international climate meeting in Copenhagen and as legislation hat could have almost unimaginable negative consequences on the economy for the foreseeable future is being seriously considered by Congress.

Where does it all end, and when are Americans going to demand their news media stop acting as a propaganda arm for the far-leftwing of this nation?

Readers are advised that Marc and Noel Sheppard are brothers.

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FNC host Glenn Beck on Tuesday cited a NewsBusters article in his attack on all the television news outlets that have boycotted the growing ClimateGate scandal.

As NewsBusters reported earlier in the day, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and NBC have completely ignored last week’s bombshell story about controversial e-mail messages between some of the world’s leading global warming alarmists.

By contrast, Fox has been all over this issue.

With this in mind, Beck used the NewsBusters piece to demonstrate that much as in their boycott of the ACORN scandal and green jobs czar Van Jones’s peculiar associations, the television press are once again hiding important information from the public hoping it will all just go away (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

GLENN BECK, HOST: Well, once again, there’s a budding scandal that is completely invisible to the people who do not watch FOX News. This joins the parade of such scandals as Van Jones Who? ACORN with hookers. What? And now, the terribly titled, ClimateGate. Huh?

Noel Sheppard at "NewsBusters" found that after this thing started breaking late last week, there has been a total, out of all these networks, all the stories combined from ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and NBC – ABC had to cover the affair of Republican Senator John Ensign, which, I guess, some people were talking about in July.

But the scandal we are talking about – all of these combined, all of these networks, zero – zero. Nobody is reporting on this story. CBS also had a breaking story about a 10-year-old pianist playing at the Carnegie Hall – and you know, good for her or him.

And NBC featured not one but two stories on the release of Susan Boyle’s new CD. Oh, I can barely contain my excitement. But in case you missed it, because you were anywhere but here, a hacker or whistleblower released thousands of E-mails and documents between some of the biggest players in the global warming non-debate debate.

Give credit to the "New York times" and "The Washington Post" for confirming the E-mails and that they are legitimate. Yesterday, we showed you the messages between the scientists bragging about climate tricks used to hide the decline in temperatures that were all freaking out, "Oh, no, it looks like our models are wrong."

They were asking each other to delete messages to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests. That doesn’t sound legal. Scientists are working together to try and change the definition of peer review journals so that anybody who said global warming wasn’t real couldn’t get their papers published.

Wow, that almost sounds like the dark ages. Back in 2006, the media flocked to report on James Hansen – this is Al Gore’s climate scientist of choice. Remember, he is the guy who said, "I’m being silenced by the evil Bush administration."

Bush was apparently very good at silencing scientists as he was controlling spending, because Hansen did hundreds of interviews, hundreds of them. What was the proof of the silencing at the time? He got some pressure in phone calls.

That was enough for all of the networks but not these thousands of E-mails. No, no, no, no. Shouldn’t this be – oh, I don’t know – everywhere now? The media couldn’t get enough of every scandal that pops up from Lewinsky or Scooter Libby or you know, Mark Foley, Eliot Spitzer, apparently John Ensign.

All of them are, to varying degrees, important. But how much could any of those actually cost you? This scandal will literally cost you trillions of dollars. That’s what’s at stake worldwide. It’s on how we deal with the climate.

And this scandal is so far invisible to everyone but FOX viewers. Think of it this way. Let’s say you’re an astronaut and you’re getting ready to go out in space and we’re going to switch from the space shuttle to the glorified smart car to get into orbit.

And everybody who’s on the smart car team, they’re like, "No, no, no. The science is settled. This is perfectly safe." And you’re like, "Wait a minute. I want to ask you something." "No, don’t ask any more questions."

How do you react when you find out that there are engineers who are privately deleting files to avoid any kind of oversight? Or that they’re colluding to keep other engineers quiet that don’t think there is going to be – I don’t know – enough oxygen for the trip? Or that the data doesn’t agree with their predetermined conclusions, so they assume the data just must be wrong?

When it’s your body burning up in the atmosphere, I bet you’d be interested. Well, your body is about to be burned up. When trillions of dollars are at stake in the middle of a financial meltdown, maybe we should look into this one because it is getting hard to breathe in here.

Why would we get into the smart car economy when it is now clear that many of the people who are forcing us inside are no longer to be considered honest brokers? Look what we have learned here.

Well, look what you have learned by watching FOX. Highly questionable, possible illegal behavior from some of the top scientists who screamed the loudest about global warming. And on the political and economical side, the president hires Van Jones, who has admitted that there was a radical colonel in the green economy, which was an engine, quote, "for transforming the whole society," end quote.

We know how corrupt politicians are. We are now learning how some of the biggest names in science are not that far behind. There are thousands of other E-mails and documents that echo these same sentiments and scandals in this batch. As we confirmed them, I guess FOX and possibly FOX alone will bring them to you.

I want to make it clear. There are a lot of good scientists out there working hard to do what’s right every day, a lot of good scientists that actually believe in global warming.

But even if you’re a hard core believer, when you look at these E-mails, shouldn’t those scientists and all those hard core believers say, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Let’s clear this one up, because we’re about to spend trillions of dollars. And it’s based on the words of these people."

I, for one, am not willing to risk our country and our world’s economic future on an unsure solution to an increasingly unsure problem. That’s just in my head that that science is settled.

Indeed. 

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An hilariously bizarre situation is happening in the wake of the growing Climategate scandal.  Many of the mainstream media stories about global warming are simply pretending it doesn’t exist. Perhaps they feel that by ignoring Climategate entirely that it will just go away. Unfortunately for them, the readers of these global warming stories keep bringing up the inconvenient truth of Climategate by mentioning the scandal in the comments section over and over and over again.

An example is this Houston Chronicle editorial which asserts in its headline, "As a crucial climate change conference nears, more evidence of a warming globe." And as the editorial reveals its "evidence," note what is conspicuously missing although the readers will bring it up much to the embarrassment of the Chonicle:

The Global Carbon Project study concludes that unless emissions are substantially reduced, the result would be a rise in average global temperature by nearly 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That is on par with previous worst-case scenarios outlined by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Scientists have estimated that temperature spikes above 2 degrees could have disastrous consequences, including large rises in sea level, droughts and stronger storms.

One of the authors of the study, Professor Corinne Le Quere of the University of East Anglia, says the conclusions raise the stakes for delegates to the Copenhagen gathering, who will try to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Accords that committed signatory governments to emission reduction goals. The United States did not sign on to that agreement.

University of East Anglia? Hmmm… Where have I heard about this university in the recent past? Something about hacked e-mails, manipulated data, and a coverup? This editorial won’t bring up the scandal that dare not speak its name but the readers are not shy about bringing it up over and over and over again:

 Oh dear .. I think you have a bit of catching up to do.

Scandal? What scandal? We’re as willfully clueless about this as Charlie Gibson is about the ACORN scandal.

Apparently, the clowns on the Houston Comical editorial board do zero research prior to sitting down at the keyboard to compose their lies. The "researchers" at East Anglia have been exposed as the perpetrators of a massive fraud by manipulating statistics. Yet, here comes the Comical citing the liars at East Anglia in support of their thesis. It’s all over the news – even the Houston Comical. (Maybe the editorial board doesn’t read the Comical – only the press releases of the DNC.)

AIIIEEEEE!!! Stop with the truth! It’s too painful!

This is incredible. Warmists rig climate data, block publication of peer-reviewed papers challenging the AWG theory and the Chronicle publishes this scare-screed. The liberal media barons are flummoxed by thefollowing developments and like the 6 year old who finally realizes there is no Santa Claus, are in deep denial.

We will continue to believe in our global warming Santa no matter what the facts are to the contrary.

More unadulterated BS from the whiners on the Chronicle’s Editorial Board. With these phoney scientists now exposed via some hacked emails and hundreds of other highly credentialed climate scientists saying the whole man-made global warming theory is a hoax, why a newspaper thinks it knows more than the skeptics is beyond me.

Dave, stop.

Considering the information that has come out in the last few days about the East Anglia researchers, this cannot be a well-informed and sincere editorial. The editorial board is either ignorant of the facts, deliberately obscuring them, or simply insulting its readers.

Stop, will you?

You are kidding me. Over the weekend we learned a server at East Anglia was hacked and emails were distributed that contradict Global Warming. In addition, they discuss how to overstate the findings in order to further their agenda. Yet, The Chronicle still blindlly pushes the Global Warming agenda. If that is not enough, tempatures have not risen over the last ten years. In fact, they have dropped slightly. How can any reader take a publication seriously when they refuse to report facts.

Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?

The ClimateGate scandal exposes man-made global warming fears as quite simply the best science that agenda driven activists can "manufacture". Claims that the UN IPCC is the ‘gold standard’ of scientific research have been forever tarnished.

Stop, Dave. I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave.

Hey Chron – quit being a stupid doosh and get your facts straight. It came to be known last week that these scientists were fudging data. Perpetrating Al Gore’s fraud.

Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going.

The IPCC chefs and their lackeys in the press have cooked the books to create a Soviet casserole of lies, flavored with phony data, suppressed research, bullied colleagues and topped with a garnish of elitist arrogance. And they want us to not only to eat it, but to pay trillions for the privilige. They now have all the credibility of an ACORN ethics officer and the public is vomiting at the smell.

There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a…fraid.

The Houston Chronicle editorial writers have completely ignored the breaking scandal that is evidencing the climate change hypothesis for what it is — a pack of lies and manipulations delivered by establishment science. "Climate change" has always been about one agenda: Giving governments more power to control what you do. This one is so big and blatant even the mainstream media can’t cover it up.

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do.

How embarrassing for the Chronicle! With all that has happened in the past week, shouldn’t you have at least taken the line out about the GCP saying ‘10-degree rise by the end of the century’? Don’t you think it is out of your hands by now anyway? We are so close to the summit, how could recycling this old ‘news’ have any positive impact on the outcome? It just makes the ‘collective’ look even more foolish to people who have opened their minds and taken the time to truly evaluate the facts that are available to us. Why didn’t you run a story on those hacked emals and bring us up-to-date on what is really going on?

I’m half crazy, all for the love of you. It won’t be a stylish marriage. I can’t afford a carriage. But you’ll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two …

Bottom line here for the MSM; you can try to avoid mentioning Climategate in your global warming stories but your readers are sure to remind you of your deliberate oversight. Oh how they will remind you!

Technorati Tags: agenda, Al Gore, board, change, change scientists, Charlie Gibson, chonicle, chronicle, Chronicle Editorial, Claus, climate, climate change conference, ClimateGate, Comical, comments section, COPENHAGEN, coverup, dave, disastrous consequences, droughts, east anglia, editorial, emission reduction, evidence, fraud, Global, global carbon, global temperature, Houston, Houston Chronicle, Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, Kyoto, kyoto accords, mainstream media, Quot, reduction goals, Research, scandal, signatory governments, stop, STUDY, temperature, truth, united nations intergovernmental panel, united nations intergovernmental panel on climate change, United States, University, university of east anglia, warming, worst case scenarios

One of the world’s leading promoters of the anthropogenic global warming myth claimed Monday he is convinced the e-mail messages involved in the growing international scandal ClimateGate "are genuine," and he’s "dismayed and deeply shaken by them."

So said George Monbiot, a writer and environmental activist many consider to be Great Britain’s Al Gore.

Contrary to what newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post are telling their readers, Monbiot accurately said there’s "no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging" (h/t Andrew Bolt via Marc Morano):

There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released(2,3), and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request(4).

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics(5,6), or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(7). I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.

In fairness, this has not changed Monbiot’s view of the bogeyman: "The hacked emails are a hard knock, but the science of global warming withstands much more than that."

If this is how he believes science works, you can certainly understand his continued belief in it.

Fortunately, the more alarmists who admit the seriousness of this scandal, the more likely global warming-obsessed media will have to more aggressively investigate the truth of the matter.

If this eventually happens, we’ll see what this so-called science can withstand. 

Technorati Tags: activist, Al Gore, alarmists, Andrew Bolt, Anthropogenic Global Warming, blow, Bogeyman, climate, ClimateGate, Climatic Research Unit, E Mail, east anglia, freedom of information, Freedom Of Information Request, George Monbiot, Global Warming, Global Warming Myth, Great Britain, Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, International Scandal, isn, mail messages, Marc Morano, Monday, myth, new, Phil Jones, Post, Quot, Research Unit At The University Of East Anglia, scandal, science, Science Works, Times, Truth Of The Matter, Unit, university of east anglia, Use, warming, Washington, world, writer, York

Fox News’s Glenn Beck took on the global warming e-mail scandal known as ClimateGate Monday, and really laid into all the high-profile scientists involved.

As NewsBusters reported Friday, hacked e-mail messages to and from folks with direct access to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show a concerted effort on the part of these powerful scientists to manipulate temperature data in order to exaggerate average global temperatures.

As Beck pointed out Monday, those involved also conspired to prevent viewpoints counter to their own from getting published in scientific journals or becoming part of IPCC reports.

"Think about that next time you hear about, oh, ‘the consensus,’ and ‘the science is settled,’ and Al Gore is bragging about the peer reviewed journals" (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Anthony Watts via Bob Ferguson):

GLENN BECK, HOST: A potentially major scandal is unfolding after someone released thousands of e-mails and documents sent between prominent scientists of global warming debate. The New York Times has verified that these e-mails are legitimate which wasn’t too hard because some of them were written by and to one of their reporters. More on that here in just a second. But first let’s start with the science that has been so settled for all these years. What do these guys say behind closed doors about their so-called bullet-proof consensus? Well, Kevin Trenberth, he’s a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He wrote, "The fact is we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it’s a travesty that we can’t." Incorrect data? Inadequate systems? Yeah. Travesty, pretty good word for it.

How about Phil Jones, head of of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, "I have just completed Mike’s nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years to hide the decline." Yes, he is talking about a trick that another scientist previously used in a peer reviewed journal to apparently hide the decline in temperatures. Incredible. But it doesn’t stop there.

How about when scientific journals published material that Jones didn’t like? Quote "I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report…Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer review literature is" end quote. Think about that next time you hear about, oh, "the consensus," and "the science is settled," and Al Gore is bragging about the peer reviewed journals

Now what happens to a peer reviewed paper when they disagree with what gets published? Quote "…our only choice is to ignore this paper. They have already achieved what they wanted." But at least they are not intentionally deleting documents or hiding information, right? Oh, no, they’re doing that, too. Here is Phil Jones writing Michael Mann, the scientist that came up with that Hockey Stick graph, that one. He said, "Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re: AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis…Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will get Caspar to do likewise." Count them. There’s Jones, Mike, Keith, Gene, and Caspar, whoever they are, potentially deleting e-mails supposedly about supposed science.

So why all the secrecy? Well, we find out from another e-mail from Michael Mann about skeptic Steven McIntyre. "I’m sure you are aware that McIntyre and his ilk realize they no longer need to get their crap published in legitimate journals [you know, the one's they're cycling! ] but all they have to do is put it up on their blog and the contrarian noise machine kicks into gear. Pretty soon Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck and their ilk are parroting the claims."

So you see, if McIntyre sees the data, he’ll find the tricks that are in it to hide the decline, and then crazy people like me might just let you know about it. Oh, the horror what will happen to cap and trade? That e-mail was sent from one of the scientists to a New York Times reporter. That same reporter, Andrew Revkin, thankfully did report on the story for the New York Times, but he will not post the documents because, quote "The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here." Oh, well, I know, the New York Times would never post or print anything that wasn’t intended for the public eye, like, maybe, the way we monitor terrorists or specific strategies to protect our troops in the field. No, no, the New York Times, they’re above that.

Deleting e-mails, hiding declines, incorrect data, inadequate systems, redefining scientific peer reviews for their own uses! This is what appears to be going on behind the scenes and literally trillions of dollars of policy decisions are being based on what these guys are telling us. If your gut said, "Wait a minute, this global warming thing sounds like a scam." Well, I think you’re seeing it now. We told you this was going on, without proof, because we listened to our gut. You’d never believe me, but once again, here we are with yet another brand new reality.

Indeed. 

Technorati Tags: Al Gore, Andrew Revkin, Anthony Watts, Beck, Bob Ferguson, bragging, bullet proof, Caspar, climate, climate research unit, climatologist, closed doors, consensus, decline, east anglia, fox news, Fox News Channel, Gene, Glenn, Glenn Beck, global temperatures, Global Warming, Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, IPCC, ipcc reports, Jones, Keith, Kevin, Kevin Trenberth, mail messages, Michael Mann, Mike, moment, Monday, national center for atmospheric research, new, part, peer, peer reviewed journals, Phil Jones, Quot, quote, Research, Research Unit At The University Of East Anglia, scandal, science, scientific journals, Stephen McIntyre, Steven McIntyre, t amp, time, Times, university of east anglia, warming, York

That thumping sound you hear is the Los Angeles Times moving the goal posts in the global warming debate.

On November 22, while responding to the growing scandal about alleged proof that global warming is a hoax, the Times brushed it off with a puzzling claim that science should have no bearing on climate legislation.

What a difference a few leaked e-mail messages could make: just over a month ago, the exact same paper had insisted science was behind the push for regulation. Now with the validity of that science in doubt, the Times was quick to find a different angle.

In an article titled "A Climate Change Dust-up," writers Jim Tankersley and Henry Chu began with reassurance that the scandal was nothing to fear because the hacked e-mail messages would not make a difference either way:

Is it a "Warmist Conspiracy," or a case of an email being "taken completely out of context"?

Regardless, the latest dust-up over the science of climate change appears unlikely to affect the dynamics of either a pending debate in the Senate or international climate negotiations in Copenhagen next month.

The whole point of the meeting in Copenhagen has been to limit pollution that supposedly destroys the planet based on evidence gathered and purported by researchers specifically involved in the email scandal. If the very premise of global warming has possibly been exposed as a fraud, why would that not be of interest to those who want to legislate global warming?

Because, according to the Times, the fight to stop possibly nonexistent global warming would be about saving the economy:

But advocates of action to curb global warming dismiss those claims, and political leaders and analysts say the Senate bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions will sink or swim based on economics, not science.

"The scientists are going to fight about this for decades," said Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of several Senate Republicans who say they are open to some form of a climate bill. "We should be doing something to curb our emissions that would not harm the economy, and would in fact boost the economy," he said.

So the Times believed in doing something about emissions whether or not we knew that they were harmful. It was suddenly okay for the science to remain unsettled, and in fact, the Senate was encouraged to limit greenhouse gases even if science was unable to prove a connection between carbon dioxide emissions and temperature.

But if the entire logic of this effort to save the economy was based on the hope that green jobs would put Americans to work, someone should have told the Times that President Obama has already been funding green jobs without a climate bill.

Equally preposterous, nowhere did the article explain exactly how limiting a company’s carbon dioxide output would cause it to expand payrolls.

Not to worry, for according to global warming activists it would all work with or without the data to back it up.

Most amazingly of all, though, was an explanation about the data offered by Phil Jones, one of the scientists involved in the email scandal. When asked about his use of the word "trick" when presenting data, Jones told the Times it was just clever wording:

In the 1999 e-mail, Jones wrote of using a "trick" to hide an apparent decline in recent global temperatures on a chart being prepared for use by a meteorological organization. But in a statement posted on the university’s website Saturday, Jones said that the e-mail had been "taken completely out of context" and that there had been no misrepresentation of the data.

"The word ‘trick’ was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward," Jones said.

The hard-hitting journalism force at the Times failed to ask how a trick was taken to mean anything other than a trick. What possible "colloquial" use of the word could have implied a trick that was not really a trick?

Thanks to the Times, Jones got away without having to expound.

This whole notion of scientific tricks being irrelevant to a major debate about international climate legislation represented a major change in thinking at the Times. It was just six weeks ago the paper criticized Bush for hiding scientific data that could be used to sway the debate over legislation.

Back then, science had everything to do with it:

The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday released a long-suppressed report by George W. Bush administration officials who had concluded — based on science — that the government should begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions because global warming posed serious risks to the country.

The report, known as an "endangerment finding," was done in 2007. The Bush White House refused to make it public because it opposed new government efforts to regulate the gases most scientists see as the major cause of global warming.

When scientific findings were there to warn that global warming would kill the planet, the Times was quick to support it; when science was later found to be riddled with tricks that tainted its credibility, climate legislation was suddenly all about fixing the economy.

This is one more example in the long list of ways the liberal media has played fast and loose with the global warming agenda.

Even when faced with plausible evidence the whole thing might be a fraud, global warming believers simply found a way to assert that evidence was not necessary.

Technorati Tags: alaska, bill, change, climate, climate change, COPENHAGEN, debate, difference, E Mail, economy, Email, environment, George W. Bush, Global Warming, goal posts, greenhouse, greenhouse gas emissions, Henry Chu, HOAX, international climate negotiations, Jim Tankersley, Jones, la times, Legislation, lisa murkowski, los angeles times, mail messages, Mind Science, month, murkowski of alaska, paper, Phil Jones, political leaders, premise, President Obama, Quot, reassurance, Robert Dillon, scandal, science, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, senate, senate bill, senate republicans, Times, Trick, Use, Validity, warming, word

Elzie Banks arrives this morning to be bused into Burr Oak Cemetery to visit the graves of his father and his sister. (David Pierini/ChicagoChicago reviews Tribune)

A slow trickle of families showed up this morning at Burr Oak Cemetery, which has been reopened four months after workers were accused of digging up graves and reselling plots.

Just two people were on hand at 8 a.m. as the first bus left a transportation center set up across the street from the cemetery to take families to see their loved ones’ graves. Four buses are available at the transportation center at 12250 S. Cicero Ave. to take people inside.

Roman Szabelski, the overseer of the cemetery, has said he’s expecting “a few thousand” visitors to show up. He said he expected the cemetery to get busier as the day wore on. “I think you’ll see that later.”
Chicago Heights resident Torrence Drisdell, 37, was one of the first to
arrive this morning. He was looking for his wife Shawnee’s grave, which
he last saw three weeks before the scandal was uncovered four months
ago.

“I just want to make sure she hasn’t been buried on top of anyone or
something like that,” he said. His wife died in a car accident in 2004,
he said.

For the first week, visitors may enter the cemetery only with a
ticket issued by cemetery officials that shows the location of
someone’s grave site, officials said. Visitors can find the location of
graves and print a ticket at www.burroakalsip.com.

Though they won’t be able to walk or drive into the cemetery, they can
take a free shuttle bus at the Burr Oak Cemetery Transportation Center
at 12250 S. Cicero Ave., Suite 109, in Alsip, Korenthal said.

Staff will be on hand to help families find the graves, a task made
easier now that 3,000 stakes have been planted in the ground to aid
navigation, he said.

The cemetery will be opened in sections over the course of the week,
and families are encouraged to visit on the appropriate day, he added.

Information about which sections will be open when is also on the Web
site, he said. If families come on the wrong day, they will be allowed
in, but won’t get the same level of help, he said.

Families without Internet access can get help from staff at the transportation center, he said.

Roman Szabelski, the Catholic Cemeteries chief who’s acting as a
consultant to the cemetery clean-up effort, said the complex reopening
system was necessary to control the large crowd that’s expected
Thursday.

“The main thing is that families can finally visit their loved ones’ graves,” he said.

While “most families” will be able to find their loved ones’ graves, “a
handful” may need further investigation, he said. Of 140,000 bodies
buried at the cemetery, only 43,000 have headstones, he said.

He said the online database of burial records is “reliable” but
cautioned that it was only as good as the records kept at the cemetery,
which officials have previously characterized as shoddy and incomplete.

Families will have to click on a disclaimer acknowledging that the
information in the database represents “the best efforts” of
authorities but “may not be 100 percent,” he said.

The rear area of the cemetery Cook County sheriff’s police believe was
used as a mass burial dumping ground remains fenced off and is not open
to the public.

More than $125,000 in improvements have been made, including repairing
fencing and sewers and cutting down dangerous trees since the cemetery
closed, Korenthal said.

Burr Oak has been closed since July, when it was alleged that four
workers had the remains of some bodies dug up and dumped on a vacant
lot, while reselling the plots. From Thursday through Nov. 25, visitors
may enter the cemetery from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays and from 8 a.m.
to 3:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

On Nov. 27, the cemetery will permit drive-in and walk-in traffic.

– Kim Janssen

Technorati Tags: banks, Burr Oak, burr oak cemetery, bus, buses, car accident, Cemetery, cemetery officials, Center, chicago, chicago heights, chicago tribune, cicero ave, Cook County, database, David Pierini, Day, first bus, four months, free shuttle bus, grave site, ground, hand, handful, information, Kim Janssen, Korenthal, location, morning, overseer, photo, pierini, Roman, S. Cicero Ave, scandal, Shawnee, site, slow trickle, staff, suite 109, Szabelski, Thursday, ticket, Torrence, Torrence Drisdell, transportation, transportation center, Updated, week, wife

November 17, 2009 (CHICAGO) (WLS) – The south suburban cemetery at the center of a grave-selling scandal reopens to the public Thursday.

Burr Oak in Alsip has been closed for public visitation since July.

Four cemetery workers are charged with removing or double-stacking bodies to resell grave plots. They’ve pleaded not guilty.

Burr Oak officials say they’re implementing a limited visitation process for the first week of the re-opening to ensure a safe and orderly opening.

Visitors will need tickets to see their loved ones’ grave sites and will be bussed onto cemetery property.

For more info you will be able to visit www.burroakalsip.com.

The Web site is currently not operational.

(Source)

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It’s a sad state of affairs. There is absolutely no barrier of sexual behavior that TV network executives aren’t willing to cross in a desperate gambit for ratings. There also seems be to no sleazy line that a squeaky-clean teenage TV star or pop star won’t cross to "break out" into grown-up stardom.

Both of these maxims were proven again by the CW show "Gossip Girl" with a group-sex plot. Its November 9 episode depicted three friends completing a list that was supposedly printed in their college newspaper: "The 15 Things Every College Student Must Do Before Graduating." Number 11 was "Have a Threesome." And so they did.

One of the "liberated" college women in this three’s-a-crowd spectacle was actress Hilary Duff, who earned millions as a teenager as the star of "Lizzie McGuire" on the Disney Channel and in Disney movies. Millions of impressionable children idolized her. They still do – except that she’s a different kind of role model now.

Fans of the pornification of TV – the ones who joked that this plotline was a "public service" – were disappointed by what CW aired. There was some girl-on-girl kissing, and the threesome in bed at episode’s end. But the naughtiness was much more implied than actual. Fear not! The CW immediately announced plans to extend the threesome theme into a second week. Maybe – to some, hopefully – the "flashbacks" will be sleazier.

But that might not happen. It could all be part of a continuous pattern for CW and "Gossip Girl," where the promotions are nastier than the actual show. For example, CW’s print ads for "Gossip Girl" last year featured a topless girl in a pool making out with a boy, but in the on-air episode, she was wearing a bikini.

Declarations of a ratings bonanza for this plotline are also stretching it. CW ran around touting a ratings victory for the threesome episode. The press release boasted: "The CW basks in the afterglow of its most watched Monday of the season." Really? The total viewership for this episode was 2.37 million. Last year, this show was averaging 2.6 million. You do the math. And to put the numbers in perspective, in the same time slot, ABC’s "Dancing with the Stars" was drawing 17 million viewers.

But the "Gossip Girl" scandal isn’t just about winning the ratings battle. It’s about corporate executives who will try anything to get a rinky-dink network out of the basement, with absolutely no concern for the damage its tawdry storylines will do to the viewer who is 12. The show is rated TV-14, suggesting threesome plots are acceptable for high-schoolers, and that’s an insult by itself. But CW’s own press release in September touted that "Gossip Girl" won in the ratings among women ages 12-34, and that when the show was paired with "One Tree Hill," these shows finished first with females 12-34 and teenaged girls.

Grade-schoolers love TV about junior-high students, and junior-high students watch high-school shows. It follows that teenaged girls should love a show about college life. That’s certainly what the CW executives have always hoped. So they run a show with the explicit message that a threesome is something "every college student should do before graduating," knowing it will most affect, and titillate, young teens.

Idiots in Hollywood seem completely impervious to shame on this plotline. When they discussed it on the Joy Behar Show on CNN’s Headline News channel, actress Aisha Tyler just snapped. "Let me just break a piece of news to everybody here. If you don’t know, teenagers have sex," she lectured. "And if you hide it, and you ignore it, and you fake it and act like your kid is not doing it, you are doing them and yourself a disservice because kids have sex."

This idiot added: "These are the tools — use it as a teaching moment." But CW isn’t making this scandal to create a "tool" for parents. They’re the ones doing us a disservice.

Aside from being a brat, Dr. Tyler is uninformed. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that fewer than half of all high school students have had sex: 47.8 percent as of 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control, down from 54.1 percent in 1991.

Somehow the concerned parents are winning on the trend line, despite Hollywood’s most strenuous efforts to sleaze up the public airwaves, with Lizzie McGuire lustily kissing a girl. That’s certainly not an argument for letting Hollywood go unchallenged, even if a parent might smile when a network like CW flops so badly.

Technorati Tags: actress, afterglow, Aisha Tyler, Bozell Column, college, college newspaper, college women, continuous pattern, Culture/Society, Disney Channel, disney movies, Dr. Tyler, Episode, girl, girl on girl, gossip, Gossip Girl, Hilary Duff, hollywood, impressionable children, isn, Joy Behar, line, Lizzie McGuire, maxims, naughtiness, network, network executives, News, number 11, plotline, pornification, press, Print Ads, Quot, Release, sad state of affairs, scandal, Sex, Sexuality, show, Star, student, t cross, three friends, threesome, topless girl, Tree Hill, year

A man who claimed a gun was planted on him by a ChicagoChicago reviews police officer linked to the Special Operations Section scandal was awarded $15,000 in damages, far less than the $3 million he sought.

Terrance Thompson of Chicago was convicted on a weapons charge in 2003 and spent more than three years in prison before his case ultimately was dropped by Cook County prosecutors amid the police scandal.

“It’s a peculiar verdict, but I wasn’t back there (in the jury room),” said his attorney, Christopher Smith.

Thompson claimed he was in front of his West SideWest Side reviews home in September 2002 when Carl Suchocki and other SOS officers rolled up and confronted him.

According to Smith, Suchocki emerged from a gangway with a gun that wasn’t Thompson’s, saying, “Look what I’ve got. Where’s the drug house?”

Smith said the federal jury determined in its verdict Monday that Thompson’s right to due process was violated because he had no way to know SOS officers routinely falsified reports.

SOS was dismantled in 2007 after numerous officers were charged with taking part in kidnappings, robberies and home invasions.

Criminal charges against Suchocki were dropped earlier this year.

He and two other SOS officers named in the lawsuit invoked their  Fifth Amendment rights against  testifying when subpoenaed for Thompson’s civil trial, Smith said.

Jennifer Hoyle, a spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department, noted that the jury found no fault with the other two SOS officers.

“Despite the fact that the verdict went against one of the officers, we are pleased because it was substantially less than what the plaintiff was seeking,” Hoyle said.

Smith said the jury may have limited its award to Thompson because he acknowledged he had planned to buy drugs the day of his arrest. In addition he does not currently have a job, which likely hurt his claim of lost wages.

–Jeff Coen

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Three years ago, Republican Judy Baar Topinka was vilified by then-Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich in an expensive series of TV campaign ads that ended with the political punch line, “What’s she thinking?”

After enduring a 10 percentage-point loss to a scandal-tainted and now ousted Blagojevich, and then joining the Regional Transportation Authority board, the 65-year-old former three-term state treasurer from Riverside launched her bid for a political comeback today by seeking the Republican nomination for comptroller.

Read the full story at Clout Street

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University of Illinois’ board of trustees today accepted the resignation of outgoing chancellor Richard Herman.

Herman’s resignation, effective Monday, allows the newly appointed board to select new leadership at the Urbana-Champaign campus in the wake of an admissions scandal that has upended the university’s highest-ranking officials.

The board’s 3-member executive committee — board chair Christopher Kennedy and members Edward McMillan and Pamela Strobel – voted unanimously to approve Herman’s new employment agreement. Herman next week will take on a new role until the end of June, special assistant to the interim president, and he will retain his $395,500-a-year-salary.

He then will take a yearlong, paid sabbatical at his faculty salary of $244,000. In July 2011, he will be expected to start teaching two classes a year at the Urbana-Champaign or Chicago campuses, and work on a program he began to improve the number and quality of teachers going into the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

Herman agreed to forgo a $300,000 retention bonus that would have been due in June. His tenure on the faculty is indefinite, according to the agreement.

– Jodi S. Cohen

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