The North Koreans are preparing for their "satellite" launch. Duck and cover, anyone?

Daniel Hannan, an Englishman who is a member of the European Parliament, blasts British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and his speech goes viral on the Internet.

The New Hampshire House votes to end the state's death penalty. They have done this before, even when the body had a Republican majority, and have seen their efforts fail, and I suspect they will fail this time as well. As for me, I have consistently opposed the New Hampshire death penalty law for two reasons. One, it discriminates by valuing some lives more than others. The law only applies to the killing of certain classes of people, like law enforcement officers. I very much value law enforcement officers in general (my father is a retired police officer, and my older brother is still working as one), but I do not believe their lives are more valuable than yours or mine. If we are to have a death penalty, it should apply to the murder of anyone, depending on the circumstances of the murder, not the occupation of the victim. Two, the state of New Hampshire has been unwilling to execute anyone since 1939. If we are unwilling to use a penalty, why do we carry it on the books? It would seem to me that the very fact of it's disuse would obviate any deterrent effect. So, let's just not bother with it unless we are willing to broaden the law to include victims regardless of occupation and social status and actually carry out the sentence in a timely manner.

Noted environmentalist Bill McKibben writes about efforts to install scrubbers on a New Hampshire coal-fired power plant. McKibben opposes the efforts, because he wants these plants shut down anyway.

Here is a must-read piece that puts the who greenhouse gas emissions issue into it's proper perspective. Essentially, the author of the piece, who is an environmentalist, states what so many on his side of the issue are unwilling to state, which is that the only way we will really diminish global greenhouse gas emissions is to put the brakes on global economic development. More poverty, less greenhouse gas emissions, more prosperity, more greenhouse gas emissions. That, of course, is why the new global warming treaty, which will replace the Kyoto Accords, will be an even bigger bunch of lies than the old treaty. Politicians who are democratically elected will not take steps to hinder economic growth. If they do, they will be turned out of office. Rulers of countries who are not democratically elected (or are kept in their seats through sham elections) will not take steps to hinder their economic growth, either, because they will not want to increase dissent, and possibly find themselves staring at the modern day equivalent of peasants with pitchforks at the palace gates.

OK, now that I have pretty much acquiesced to the probability of disastrous global warming (assuming the theory is correct, which it may not be) which will not be addressed by global leaders, and I have accepted the fact that global leaders will probably screw the pooch on the global financial crisis, which may lead us into the next Great Depression, I am now faced with the possibility of a massive solar storm, perhaps as soon as 2012, that, according to this article about a recently released NASA report, will devastate our electrical grid, leading to chaos, starvation, and potentially a million American deaths. Hmmm...doesn't the Mayan calendar predict the end of the world in 2012?

Would Natasha Richardson have lived if she'd been skiing at an American resort, rather than a Canadian one? This article examines how she might have fared better under American, rather than Canadian, healthcare.

E.J. Dionne speaks the truth when he writes that our politicians, if they are going to spend the oodles of money they seem about to spend, are going to have to raise taxes to pay for it all, if they are also serious about cutting the size of the deficit. Of course, they're not really serious about cutting the deficit.