By Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Bone

It’s what I call the extension cord dilemma. I think you know what I mean when you throw an extension cord in the back of your pickup, the next time you take it out it is in such a tangle that it takes you half an hour to get it straightened out. There is no way on earth that you could ever tangle a cord up that badly if you did it on purpose. That is sort of what happened around the halls the legislature this last week.

How could it be possible for three committees of the legislature to schedule what will probably go down in at least recent history, as the three largest hearings ever to take place at the capital. I can assure you that it was not orchestrated by any of the committee chairs. The House State Affairs Committee hearing on what has been called the nullification bill lasted for two days, Wednesday and Thursday. The House Judiciary and Rules Committee had a very long hearing Wednesday afternoon that dealt with law enforcement on tribal lands. Also, as you may have heard, on three consecutive days the Senate Education Committee had very long days of hearings on Superintendent Luna’s education reform bills. All in all it proved to be quite a week.

You may be curious as to what my thinking is on House Bill 117 which is the bill that directs our state agencies not to further implement the Affordable Health Care Act. During the last session of the legislature we authorized and directed our Attorney General to file suit in an effort to have the national health care bill declared unconstitutional. Our suit was consolidated with that of twenty-five other states and the case was tried in the state of Florida. With the ruling on our case that declared the law to be unconstitutional, it only makes sense that we should not move forward in implementing it. I think if we moved ahead with implementing the law that we could very well be in contempt of court. At least it seems like it is not reasonable to continue with implementation when the very judge we asked to make the decision told us that we were right, that it is unconstitutional to require every citizen to buy a certain product. House Bill 117 merely says that we are going to follow the judge’s order. We expect floor debate in the House early in the week.

The volume of e-mail coming on education reform has been astonishing. There has been so much going on this past week that it has been impossible to keep up. On top of the two mornings of very long hearings, the afternoon committees have kept me busy as well. I can’t remember a session where there has been so much to do all at once. In talking with some of my colleagues they are finding that the same is true for them.

This education legislation is turning out to be one of the more interesting issues I’ve ever seen around this place. The three days of hearings have convinced the sponsors that there are some changes that need to be made. I am thinking that we should be careful and as always the devil is in the details. I don’t think there is a way that I can support mandatory online classes for kids. I think there’s a better way to accomplish what we’re trying to do in modernizing education in Idaho. Further I think that there has to be buy-in from all concerned, kids, parents, and teachers. No matter what we do in the legislature, if there is no buy-in, the program will face tough sledding. I am also concerned that the more regulating we do in the capital, the less innovation there is in the classroom. Stay tuned for the changes. There are likely to be a bunch.

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By Richard Larsen

Sounding the call for education reform, several notable organizations have courageously weighed in on the much-needed repair of our arguably broken educational system. The Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, The Idaho Business Coalition for Education Excellence, the Boise Chamber of Commerce, and Melaleuca Inc. are calling for a renaissance of Idaho education. Most notably, the J.A and Kathryn Albertson Foundation has explicitly called for reform.
The Albertson Foundation proclaimed in a full-page ad in last Sunday’s Idaho State Journal, “For the first time in our history as a supporter of Idaho’s education system, we are compelled to sound the alarm – loudly and widely. Given the current economic climate and our poor position in the global workforce, the status quo is not an option and will only harm Idaho.”

They continued, “We don’t take this stand in support of the Governor and the State Department’s education plan lightly. As a friend and supporter of education we wade into this issue circumspectly, but we wade in nonetheless. The reform efforts we’ve funded have not worked, have had limited impact, or were never systemically adopted. At all levels and repeatedly, we’ve met with political indecision, territorialism, and a lack of political will. The historical focus on barriers, challenges, excuses and maintaining the status quo permeates our education system and stakeholder groups.”

Our educational system is not producing the results required to meet the needs of an increasingly global workforce, where Idaho school children are prepared to compete with kids around the world. The Albertson Foundation cited some disturbing data to illustrate. “Only 1 in 4 high school graduates is deemed college ready, and many will require remediation after high school. (ACT Profile Report, Idaho Graduating Class, 2009) Idaho is in the bottom 10 states for college-going rates and dead last in the nation for our postsecondary retention rates. (National Information Center for Higher Education Policy and Analysis). In the future, most jobs will be either for highly skilled workers or the low-skilled working poor. Our system prepares students for the latter. (Lumina Foundation, Increasing College Success: The Economic Imperative). By 2018, 61% of jobs in Idaho will require postsecondary credentials. 146,000 skilled jobs will be waiting, but Idaho students are not on track to be qualified to fill them. (Lumina Foundation, A Stronger Nation Through Higher Education, Sept. 2010, Idaho Profile).”

More money or continued funding at current levels is not the answer. As the Albertson Foundation, which has invested over $400 million into Idaho schools, declared, “While money matters, it is NOT the solution. Now is the time, while resources are scarce, to end inefficiencies, remove contractual roadblocks, incentivize collaboration and results, and get rid of policies that perpetuate silos, territorialism, and the duplication of services.”

As Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” We’ve been doing the same thing over and over again with our educational system, even pumping more and more money into it, while expecting different results than we’ve been achieving. It’s time for a paradigm shift where we think differently and enact a system that produces different results. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna’s plan seems to do just that. It challenges the status quo which means we’ll be excoriated by cries from the special interest groups, primarily the teacher’s union, over how devastating it is.

That raises a critical point about unions. Their primary objective is not superior end-product results, but rather union jobs. United Auto Workers’ primary goal is not to produce quality vehicles any more than the Idaho Education Association’s primary goal is to produce well-educated children. Their primary objectives are teacher jobs, contracts, and benefits which may have an affect on our children’s academic performance and job preparedness, but have proven to be causally impotent. After all, look at the results.

Alan Mulally, President of Ford Motor, refused a government bailout. He changed policy, implemented a paradigm shift that challenged the UAW and the status quo, changed policies and the culture within Ford, and now produces some of the best automobiles in the world. He did that with less, having not taken the proffered bailout, and produced exceptional results.

Tom Luna’s plan offers a similar opportunity for retooling our education system to reshape results, as Alan Mulally’s changes at Ford yielded superior end products.

The Albertson Foundation ad concludes, “We can either choose to support education reform, or the choice will be made for us when we can no longer supply innovators or a workforce capable of fueling a vibrant, innovative and globally focused Idaho economy.” Is Luna’s plan the elixir to all that ails our schools? Perhaps not, but it’s a start. What we have is not working. And just like in investing, throwing good money after bad is illogical.

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By Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Bone

A couple of years ago, we were cleaning the shop at the ranch. While doing so I could hardly believe some of the things that I had kept around the place. There were worn-out bearing races, short pieces of useless metal, and other old parts that we had accumulated from previous repair efforts. I thought that it probably was just me, but I soon found out that the whole family had been doing the same thing I had. Apparently, there is a little bit of pack rat in all of us.

Each year as I leave a legislative session, I gather up some of my stuff from the capital and take it home. Linda is not terribly fond of this activity because it all resides very comfortably in the off-season in my office. Now I’m not going to say that I never use these things, but I do tend to go through them from time to time looking for information on things that were done during the previous session. As you can imagine, the next thing that happens is to repack everything and haul it back to the capital. I was doing that last week on Sunday evening after arriving in Boise. The only other person I happened to see at that time in the entire building was a security guard and I don’t think he saw me. It was an eerie feeling to have everything so quiet knowing full well that the legislature would start in earnest the next morning.

On Monday, After Convening in the House, and gathering the Senators, the Elected Officials, and the Judiciary, the Governor Gave His Annual State of the State Message and Budget Message. It was one of the more interesting that I have seen during my time in the legislature. I think it is the first time that I have heard a governor not present a large wish list for the legislature to consider. He has projected a small increase in revenues but seemed to recognize that there is no room this year for new items in the budget. One thing that stood out, was his request to bond for the money that we owe the federal government for unemployment benefits. It certainly deserves consideration but at the same time we need to make sure that we don’t over-extend the resources of the state.
The other item during the week that seemed to occupy a lot of discussion time was the new education reforms that Superintendent Luna proposed. I think it is a good thing for students to begin to learn how to take courses online. There are so many resources available for education in this day and age and I hope that educators will have an open mind when it comes to considering these new ways of educating kids. I have been told that there is a vast new resource online called Google Apps Education that is being successfully used in other parts of the country. I hope we will look seriously at what is available from that source. The other part of the proposal in providing a laptop computer for every student is one that will need careful consideration. Just giving a computer to each student could be problematic and a better way might be to require some ownership of the students for the equipment. It seems like when we as humans have some ownership we take better care of things.

Several members of the House health and welfare committee had a chance to participate in a conference call with the former director of health and welfare for the state of Rhode Island. That state has worked with the federal government in getting flexibility to operate the Medicaid program. They claim to be realizing great savings while at the same time not reducing the programs or eligibility. This looks to be a major new effort that we will be looking at during this session.

And so it begins. One of the suggestions I heard around these halls was that we probably should just adopt the Governor’s budget and go home. That may be too much to hope for because I am sure a lot of legislators want to have a careful look at what he has proposed. Seeing how it is our constitutional responsibility to develop a budget, that is what we will do.

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By Andi Elliott

Just this week I received a course catalog from The Heritage Institute located in Washington State which specializes in courses for teachers. Browsing through the course listings, I came upon some rather “interesting” course topics.

For example, there is a course entitled “RISING UP IN PROTEST: Inspiring Students Thru Social Justice Issues”…sounds like something straight out of a Marxist playbook. Then there is “GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL: Roots of Global Inequality” followed by “LESS IS MORE” which teaches us that “we Americans” are consuming too much. Part of the material used in this course comes from a Seattle-based “activist filmmaker”.

How about “WORLD WE WANT: Self-Design Courses for Teacher Activists”. Funny, when I was a teacher and actively involved with the Tea Party, my administration was VERY unhappy. Now, they are teaching teachers to be activists. Wonder if it makes any difference as to whether you are a Liberal or Conservative.

All I can say, is that in too many cases we can’t turn out students who can read and write and perform ordinary mathematical tasks, but we certainly can train our teachers to teach them how protest and to manipulate these “minds of mush”. Parents, I hope you are awake out there!

Andi Elliott

Tea Party Patriots Idaho State Coordinator
Idaho Falls Tea Party Organizer
Patriotic Resistance Idaho State Coordinator
Idaho District 2 Coordinator Anystreet.Org

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By Richard Larsen

Sometimes metaphors work, and sometimes they don’t. There are sometimes more differences than there are similarities, yet it appears that Chuck Klosterman, a writer for Esquire and other publications, is onto something.

“Right now,” he said, “we’re like a nation of Kevin Arnolds (from a TV series); being likable is the only thing that seems to matter to anyone. You see this everywhere. Parents don’t act like parents anymore, because they mainly want their kids to like them; they want their kids to see them as their two best friends. This is why modern kids act like animals. At some point, people confused being liked with being good. Those two qualities are not the same. It’s important to be a good person; it’s not important to be a well-liked person. It’s important to be a good country; it’s not important to be a well-liked country. And I realize there are problems with America. But the reality behind those problems has no relationship to whether or not France (or Turkey, or Winnie Cooper) thinks we’re cool. They can like us, they can like like us, or they can hate us. But that is their problem, not ours.”

Politically, especially on the international stage, we are seeing more and more discontent with America. We are not well liked, nor are we respected by many around the globe. And who can blame them? The leader of our nation offends and publicly castigates our closest allies, reneges on promises to our friends, and heaps praise on our avowed enemies, all the while groveling in public ignominy lamenting of our nation’s flaws and errors. If there was a recipe book for politicians on how to ensure their country would not be liked or respected, our president could author it. He has compiled quite the anthology already.

Socially and culturally, there seems to be much truth to Klosterman’s observations as well. We have long departed from the “Leave It To Beaver” era of parenting where values and respect were the foundation of the parent/child relationship. Parents want to be “friends” with their kids, so values and respect take a back seat to child rearing, which has the natural yet undesirable unintended consequence of moral relativism in the children. There is less and less of a sense of right and wrong, and parents allow their children to engage in all kinds of promiscuous and self-destructive behavior, not wanting to press issues of morality for the sake of being “friends” with their kids. They are facilitators and accomplices in their kids’ aberrant and destructive behavior.

It also was the norm not long ago that other adults would often serve as proxy parents for misbehaving children. Adult friends and neighbors would look out for others’ children and reprove them for recalcitrant behavior and report them to their parents for proper disciplining. It seems most adults these days have bought into the same notion of being friends with the local kids rather than acting like adults and looking out for their welfare. No wonder we as a culture have regressed so far. Certainly there are other factors, but this fundamental societal breakdown, this shift from being good to being liked, has to be at the top of the causal list for our social degeneration. I think Hillary Clinton was right, it does take a village.

As Klosterman pointed out, being liked and being good are not synonymous. Neither are “unconditional love” and “support” synonymous. Generally we love our children regardless of the hurtful, stupid, and self-destructive things they do. But do we support them in their actions? If my child wants to commit suicide do I support him in his effort? Of course the notion is ludicrous, and so is it casuistic and specious to think parents should support their children in any other self-destructive behavior. But then, to the parent who prefers to be liked than to be a real parent, maybe the two are indeed synonymous.

There are studies bearing this out as well. Code Blue, a 1990 report by a blue-ribbon panel on the health of American teenagers, warned that “never before has one generation been less healthy, less cared for or less prepared for life than their parents were at the same age.” The experts concluded that the teens’ deteriorating condition was due to their behavior and not to physical illness.

Perhaps the distinction of being liked versus being good is just the reincarnation of the classic Platonic distinction of form versus substance. Someone’s nice or comely, and in today’s world those characteristics have more weight than character, integrity, and substance. What a sad commentary that we pass to successive generations not only a multi-generational national debt that they may never be able to repay, but also a collective social amorality where character matters less than aesthetics and likability.

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By Robert L. Webster

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for the people of a nation to demand a return to the fundamental principles of liberty which were established by their founding fathers, and to eliminate the changes which have weakened and deformed it from the intent of the original charter, a decent respect to the opinions of its citizens, civilized nations and of all mankind, requires that they should declare the causes which compel them to this action.

We, the people of the United States of America, hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are born free, in that they are endowed at birth by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are the right to life, liberty, property and the freedom of choice – that to secure these rights, men may institute a government, delegating to it those specifically enumerated and limited powers necessary to the security and felicity of the governed, and that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right and duty of the people to alter or abolish it, and in its place to either restore the original, or institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as shall seem to them most likely to secure their national safety and happiness.

Prudence dictates that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes, and history has shown that men are naturally inclined to suffer abuses of government, while abuses are tolerable, than to correct them by abolishing the traditional form of government to which they are accustomed. But when a long and significant string of abuses has been experienced, and appears to be designed to destroy the Constitutional form and revert back to the despotic forms of history, this people reasserts its God-given right and duty to throw off such abuses, and to restore again the principles and safeguards provided by the Founders in the inspired original system, the Constitution of the United States of America.

The citizens of this Democratic Republic have suffered enough abuses of government power over its brief bi-centennial existence. The history of the second century in particular is replete with injuries and usurpations, in an apparent design to convert and subjugate this land of abundant resources, industrious people and “common-law” liberty back under the control of the ancient systems of “rulers law.” As testimony, let the sobering facts be submitted openly before God, and to a candid world of witnesses:

Religious persecution has been allowed to persist without just redress or protection by the national or State governments, at times occurring even under government orders.

The issue of “separation of church and state” has been grossly distorted to the point of separation of religion from government and from everyday life. This is a national disgrace, and a reversal of the wholesome relationship intended by the Founders as essential to national well being.

The sixteenth amendment of 1913 has violated the Founder’s principles by authorizing the federal government to collect direct income taxes from the people. It has been a primary cause of centralization of power to the central government, and must be repealed.

The seventeenth amendment of 1913 has helped to destroy States’ rights and the delicate checks and balances system by making the election of US Senators by popular vote, instead of by the State Legislatures, thus increasing the influence of

The twenty third amendment attempts to create a State out of a city – Washinton DC – in violation of the Founders wisdom. It must be repealed, allowing the residents to vote as citizens of the State of Maryland.

The twenty fifth amendment violates the Founders’ principles by allowing a President to appoint a Vice President, which, under manipulated conditions of sedition and murder could result in a president never elected to office; it must be repealed.

The twenty sixth amendment dangerously advanced “democracy” beyond a healthy balance by allowing eighteen-year-olds to vote. They lack maturity; it should be repealed.

MONEY IS POWER, and the enemies of America have taken control of America’s wealth. The Federal Reserve System of 1913 is unconstitutional and must be replaced immediately by the Constitutional Monetary System as prescribed by the Founders – the economic system of prosperity which has never yet been instituted!

America’s Constitutionally prescribed gold and silver money standard has been unconstitutionally removed, and must be restored, under Congressional control. With the value of the dollar and the money supply tied to within 5% of the measured Gross National Product, and limiting all interest rates to a maximum of 10%, for no longer than ten years credit; prosperity would be unprecedented and secured.

The Congress has consistently spent beyond its budget; a balanced biennial budget must be required, under penalty of automatic dismissal from office for all who vote to cause budget excesses.

The Congress has voted to increase its pay while still in its current term of office; these current increases must be repealed and all future increases outlawed; each one voting for it should be recalled by their respective States. The States alone must decide Congressional salaries.

The Congressional seniority system has stagnated progress and corrupted the legislature. Amend the constitution to limit all federal elected legislative, executive and judicial terms to a lifetime total of twelve years in any one office or position.

The total tax burden of the people, including federal, State, local, sales and hidden taxes, is now 50% or more of the average individual wage earner’s income, a level so oppressive that it approaches complete subjugation. It is destroying the lives of America’s people! Not even Almighty God taxes beyond 10%! Amend the Constitution to limit the TOTAL maximum individual taxable burden to 10%, with the States to collect it and apportion revenues to various levels of government – State, Local, and Federal – for only constitutionally authorized activities. Exclude all churches, inheritances and all people under age 21 from any form of taxation. The people must be free to profit and prosper from their own enterprise and initiative, and free to keep and use their earnings as they choose. The result will be a more prosperous nation and government.

Property ownership has been eliminated unconstitutionally by property taxation. Reestablish property ownership to include all surface and subsurface rights, and never may be forfeited or lost due to failure to pay taxes of any kind, and that property may be inherited or granted free from any inheritance tax.

The Congress has violated the individual freedom and income of the people with the oppressive and ineffective Social Security System. Phase it out in ten years and replace it with voluntary, private, annuity-type savings and investment programs for retirement. Leave welfare to the generosity of the local people, who (when not over-taxed by government) will provide for the needy directly.

There is no Constitutional authority for federal involvement to be in business enterprises of any kind. Liquidate all federal businesses and properties into private enterprise hands in ten years.

There is no Constitutional authority for federal ownership or management of lands and resources beyond the constitutional prescription, viz. Washington DC, ports and arsenals, needful government buildings and legitimate US territories; yet the federal has withheld lands and resources within state boundaries, rightfully belonging to those States created out of public domain. Restore all lands and resources immediately to the respective States.

There is no Constitutional authority for federal involvement in education, except to encourage it within the States, as explained in the Northwest Ordinance of 1897, viz. the teaching of religion, morality and knowledge. Promote education of the Constitution in the tradition of the Founders, but cease all direct involvement in education. It is exclusively a State issue.

There is no Constitutional authority for any level of government to give away (grant) any of the people’s property (money) as AID to anyone for any purpose; this includes aid to education, welfare and foreign banks or interests. Cease all grants. Leave the solution of all such matters to the States and the people. Experience has clearly demonstrated that such aid does not buy friends, but is counterproductive. Export American constitutional freedom and prosperity by example, not by financial grants.

The Supreme Court has usurped legislative power: Congress must strike out all decisions which conflict with the Founders’ intent. Limit federal court jurisdiction to matters of life, liberty and national citizenship. No person born in the USA of non-citizen parents has a right to US citizenship. No foreigner or criminal has US citizen rights beyond liberty and life, while staying here.

The court system has obstructed justice and has not provided the right to a speedy and just trial. Eliminate plea bargaining. Require capital punishment within six months for capital crimes.

Inadequate checks exist to prevent or correct constitutional abuses of power by the Supreme Court. Authorize by amendment an elected Regional Court of Constitutional Appeal, which can judge and overturn or reverse any decisions of the Supreme Court which may be judged by the elected Regional Court of Constitutional Appeal to be unconstitutional.

The federal government has entangled America in foreign alliances contrary to the Founders’ intent. Through NATO, the UN, Nafta, Gatt and other “alliances,” the federal has combined with other unelected entities to subject America to jurisdictions foreign to our Constitution and not acknowledged by our laws, giving unauthorized consent to their acts of pretended legislation and concepts of so-called “international law.” No unelected body has power to make any law binding on any people! Cancel US involvement in the United Nations Charter; we are not bound by it. Cancel US funding of the UN, and restrict UN activity to a discussion forum of only those nations operating as constitutional republics.

There is no constitutional authority for the Executive branch to create law, yet the President issues Executive Orders having the effect and force of law, and the executive branches issue regulations which have the force of law but not passed by the legislature. Repeal all such, and establish a paid ten-member Federal/ State/ Citizen Checks and Balances Committee to watchdog all Federal and State branches for usurpations of power.

The federal has involved the nation in undeclared “no win” wars in violation of the constitution, transporting large armies to many foreign places in defense of international power schemes aimed at one-world government dominion. Amend the constitution to provide that 2/3 of the States legislatures may override any Congressional declaration of war. No so-called “police action” or international “peacekeeping” military force will be permitted. Any deployment of US military forces must be committed to protect America’s constitutional values, and to WIN – to end the conflict and restore peace as quickly as possible.

National leaders often have had no constitutional training prior to office; require all elected and appointed officials to pass a national constitutional examination in the intent of the Founders, based on the Constitution itself and the Federalist Papers, as a pre-requisite for federal elective offices and judgeships. Publish a semi-annual constitutional voting and decisionmaking index for all such federal officers.

The executive branch has created a multitude of new offices, and has sent forth a swarm of agents who harass the people. Not the least of these is the IRS, which has been unconstitutionally empowered to function as all three branches of government combined – creating laws, administering them, judging their compliance, prescribing the penalties and enforcing them, often unjustly. This is tyranny!

Repeated petitions for redress of grievances have been ignored or become cause for REPEATED INJURIES TO THE PEACE AND CONFIDENCE OF THE PEOPLE. The federal seems deaf to the voice of constitutional principles, continually seeking to expand its jurisdiction and power, increasing it’s inequitable system of taxes, increasing its spending without prudent budget limitations, seeking primarily for re-election and party status, while subjugating the States, local governments and the people.

The Founders’ worst fears of concentration of power into political parties (Faction) have become realized. The system of political parties has entrenched itself by gradual tradition into the very fabric of all levels of government to control legislation, positions of power, and even provide government-financed primary elections of private political parties, which exclude independents and new parties. Require that no person may be a candidate for or hold any public office, federal or state, who is sponsored by any political party, and that no position in any level of government may be held by anyone who is a member of a political party.

Therefore, WE THE PEOPLE have determined that we as citizens, deprived of our liberties under our current government, much as were our Founders under the hands of an oppressive king, unitedly denounce the above-noted offending actions of our government as being UNCONSTITUTIONAL, employing first those constitutional means at our disposal to remove the offenders and the offences, restoring the Constitution to the original intent of the Framers. In those cases when peaceful means have proven inadequate, we reserve the right of liberty under God, as stated in the original Declaration of Independence, to effect the necessary restorations by force – political, economic or military.

It is left to us of this generation of Americans to preserve, defend and restore the greatest charter of human liberty in history, for ourselves and for all mankind, the original Constitution of the United States of America.

With a firm reliance on the guidance and protection of the Almighty, who inspired our Founders to create the establishment of the original Constitution, we the undersigned herein do mutually pledge to God, to each other and to our posterity, our fortunes, our sacred honor and even our very lives if necessary, to the restoration of the Constitution of The United States of America.

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Be sure to tune in to Halli & Friends Thursday at 8am for an interesting conversation with Senator Darrel Deide, chairman of Idahoans for Choice in Education. Sen. Deide has a unique perspective on the laws governing education in Idaho, and will discuss ways to increase choice for parents seeking alternatives to traditional government schools.

All Halli & Friends episodes can also be heard on demand at BlogTalkRadio.com/IdahoTalk, while the most recent can be heard on the player on this page.

During Monday’s Halli & Friends radio program, House Idaho Education Chairman Rep. Bob Nonini made some remarkably candid remarks about Idaho public education, while discussing upcoming education legislation.

Captain Steve Lucks also described the ways Islamic law is influencing every day life in the US.

Hear both interviews on demand using the player on this page.

Yes, you knew it was just a matter of time before I found a way to share my views with Idaho and the world once again! And the internet has provided the means – “Halli & Friends” is now available online at BlogTalkRadio.com/IdahoTalk. The show is live at 1pm MST, weekdays, and available on-demand any time, day or night! Several great episodes are already available on the website.

It’s easy to listen on line. Just go to the website and click on today’s show. A new page will open and you’ll need to click the “play” button to listen in live. Be sure to call in with comments, too, at 917-889-3946. Or, you can “click to talk” from the page, using a microphone-headphone headset with your computer.

The show will also be carried on Minuteman Radio 1610, heard on the east side of Idaho Falls.

Listen to past episodes on-demand by clicking on the show title, and the show should begin to play.

Upcoming guests will include legislators, lobbyists, constitutional scholars, and many, many more. Be sure to call in to join the conversation!

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By Richard Larsen

In April, President Obama declared that “the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.” But actions in Washington over the past few weeks prove that ideology is sitting firmly in the front of the class, and science may have been kicked out of the room, as Congress narrowly passed their massive tax on energy (cap and trade bill), and the Obama administration has tried to silence a dissenter on global warming in the EPA.

In March, Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, asked agency officials to distribute his analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases, carbon emissions, and anthropogenic global warming. He called for the agency to look at the science behind the arguments which he accurately claimed had “gaping scientific holes” in them. With such an honest assessment of the science, the new administration, with its profound respect for science over ideology, would certainly welcome the report which was replete with peer-reviewed research. Apparently not. Carlin’s director, Al McGartland, forbade him from having “any direct communication” with anyone outside his office about his study. He said, “There should be no meetings, e-mails, written statements, phone calls, etc.” In other words, he was censored.
It’s easy to see why, since his report didn’t jive with the ideology already heavily invested in by the administration. Carlin states in his opening remarks, “The issue is whether the GHG/CO2/AGW hypothesis meets the ultimate scientific test—conformance with real world data. What these comments show is that it is this ultimate test that the hypothesis fails; this is why EPA needs to carefully reexamine the science behind global warming before proposing an endangerment finding.” He continues, that the AGW argument,“is currently an invalid hypothesis from a scientific viewpoint because it fails a number of critical comparisons with available observable data. Any one of these failings should be enough to invalidate the hypothesis; the breadth of these failings leaves no other possible conclusion based on current data. As Feynman (1975) has said failure to conform to real world data makes it necessary from a scientific viewpoint to revise the hypothesis or abandon it. Unfortunately this has not happened in the global warming debate, but needs to.”

The data Carlin is referring to, is actual, not computer modeled, global temperatures which have remained flat over the past decade, and even cooled slightly. In fact, just five months ago, all four major global temperature tracking outlets released their 2008 data showing that temperatures have dropped significantly over the last year. California meteorologist Anthony Watts says the amount of cooling ranges from 65-hundredths of a degree Centigrade to 75-hundreds of a degree. In other words, the drop in global temperatures last year alone, in spite of increasing amounts of carbon emissions concentrations over the past ten years, was enough to erase all of the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. The tracking agencies indicate that it was the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down. To my knowledge, not everyone quit driving cars last year, or quit exhaling, neither did all the coal-fired plants discontinue operations last year, and thermostats were not set uniformly to something other than 72 degrees.

Since the actual empirical science does not support the Jeremiads of the global warming doomsayers, their conviction in their pseudo-science is reduced to, gasp, a matter of faith. The ardent believers are many, and most are those who mock Christians and other people of faith. How’s that for an amusing dichotomy? Even Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the “new religion.”

The backlash against the “consensus” is growing, as the scientific community is finally speaking up about the evidence. Joanne Simpson, recently retired Ph.D. in meteorology expressed relief that she is now able to speak frankly about the fraudulence of the AGW alarmists. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who participated on the UNs IPCC climate committee claims that man-made warming is “the worst scientific scandal in history,” and a group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton’s Will Happer, is demanding that the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is “settled,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

It looks more and more like this administration doesn’t respect science, but respects the pseudo-science that will provide justification for their ideological objectives, including the asinine assault on our economy called “cap and trade.” And they’re doubling down with a new G8 accord to reduce our carbon output to 1910 levels, committing, as the Investor’s Business Daily puts it, “economic suicide.” Somehow I don’t think this level of respect for science is the “change” we “hoped” for.

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