By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  November 20th at 10:30 PM  | 

Former Democratic Congressman William Jefferson, convicted on bribery and racketeering charges and sentenced to a Congressional-record 13-year sentence, recently received a couple of significant holiday-season gifts from Judge T.J. Ellis III. Recently, Judge Ellis decided that Jefferson is not a flight risk and may remain free pending appeal, a process that may take a year or more. During that time, Jefferson must wear a monitor | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  November 18th at 11:29 PM  | 

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers mismanaged the maintenance of the shipping channel known as the “Mister GO” (the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, MR-GO), leading directly to the flooding of thousands of homes and businesses in St. Bernard Parish and the New Orleans neighborhood known as the Lower Ninth Ward. The case directly involves $700,000 in damages | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  November 13th at 12:05 AM  | 

Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel are lawyers in the Environmental Protection Agency’s San Francisco office. They are also married to each other. Williams and Zabel are Global Warming “true believers”. They’ve done the research, and they think the Waxman-Markey-Boxer-Kerry Cap and Trade scheme is a very bad idea. So they wrote a position paper for the website www.carbonfees.org. They wrote an editorial that was published | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  November 12th at 06:00 PM  | 

When I was a kid (mid- to late-’60s), nightly TV news shows were everyone’s source of information. Alongside from the flickering bland-and-white coverage of the Vietnam war and protesting hippies, I distinctly remember stories that would be foreign to us in 2009: food prices. Yes, food prices. Right there in the segment where today you’d expect to see updates on gasoline prices, you’d have David | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  November 7th at 10:48 AM  | 

In a precedent-setting ruling, a judge in the UK upholds Mr Tim Nicholson’s right to sue his former employer because he was fired over his environmental beliefs and his green lifestyle. Climate change belief given same legal status as religion In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said that “a belief in man-made climate change … is capable, if genuinely held, of being a | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  November 7th at 02:02 AM  | 

State investigators taking dozens of computers from ACORN office on Canal Street Early last month, Caldwell’s office issued subpoenas for records from ACORN’s New Orleans office, where the organization — now moving its national headquarters to Washington — has long been based. … In a statement, ACORN’s attorney Pamela Marple said the group was told the raid was ordered because of reports that workers loyal | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  November 7th at 01:30 AM  | 

Friday night, prosecutors in the case of The United States v. William Jefferson (D-LA) issued a memorandum recommending a prison sentence of 27 to 33 years for the former congressman from New Orleans, consistent with Federal sentencing guidelines. Such a long sentence is justified, according to the memo, by the severity of the crimes, flight risk, and the possibility of hidden assets. Anything approaching the | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  November 3rd at 12:05 AM  | 

One of the stranger episodes in corporate marketing history occurred in 1985 when the Coca-Cola Corporation decided to alter the secret formula of its flagship product. Maybe Republican Party leaders could stand a review.

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  November 2nd at 09:30 PM  | 

We often fall into the trap of acting on emotions, not facts. It certainly makes us feel good to feel like we’re doing something positive. But being a grownup requires discipline, common sense and thinking instead of feeling. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our approach to energy and environmental policy. One example: the “eat local” movement seems to be getting some traction among | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  October 30th at 11:00 AM  | 

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is under attack by some of its members for its opposition to the Cap and Trade bill. The Natural Resources Defense Council, through its blogs and through the website whodoesthechamberrepresent.org maintains a running watch on those altruistic companies who have either quit the Chamber or publicly disputed its Climate Change position. To the NRDC, companies that stick with the Chamber’s | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  October 27th at 12:31 AM  | 

On Sunday, we learned that one of the best things we can do for Mother Gaia is to keep the sizes of our families at a minimum. In the final analysis, a human being is nothing more than a CO2 generator on legs. Today’s lesson in Saving the Planet comes from Britain, where the Lord High Poo-Bah of Climate Change, Lord Stern of Brentford, has | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  October 25th at 07:56 PM  | 

NYT Environment Reporter Floats Idea: Give Carbon Credits to Couples That Limit Themselves to One Child Washington (CNSNews.com) – Andrew Revkin, who reports on environmental issues for The New York Times, floated an idea last week for combating global warming: Give carbon credits to couples that limit themselves to having one child. Revkin later told CNSNews.com that he was not endorsing the idea, just trying | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  October 25th at 02:45 PM  | 

At first blush, this story from the Washington Post is pretty funny: a “green energy” firm’s wind farm project in West Virginia is being challenged under the Endangered Species Act by some local tree bat huggers. Tiny bat pits green against green It is the first court challenge to wind power under the Endangered Species Act, lawyers on both sides say. … At the heart | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  October 22nd at 10:59 AM  | 

New Orleans’ Democrat Mayor Ray Nagin can see the advantages of a country like Cuba, when it comes to hurricane preparedness and evacuation. Cuba, you see, was hit by Hurricanes Gustav, Ike and Paloma last year and suffered only seven fatalities. Nagin is in Cuba with a trade delegation from the Crescent City for a five-day visit. Ray Nagin: Cuba’s government is ideal for storm | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  October 20th at 03:00 PM  | 

To a capitalist, the words “It’s different this time” are a notorious red flag. They’re usually uttered in the midst of a speculative boom, to explain why this boom is different from the last one that went disastrously bust. In a market driven by capitalist rules (supply & demand, creative destruction), they’re nearly always wrong. But in a centrally-planned system, where the government picks winners | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  October 16th at 05:05 PM  | 

A couple of weeks ago, on a Sunday night/Monday morning, a poll at the social networking site Facebook asked the question: “Should Obama Be Killed?” Here’s a screenshot: As soon as the objectionable poll was noticed, the site’s management pulled it down. (Actually, they disabled the poll application. DailyKos poster Vann has a diary up at that site; seems he was the app’s developer.) The | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  October 13th at 11:30 AM  | 

Over the weekend, an unpaid ACORN volunteer in New Orleans expressed her desire to see a little more evidence of the Hope’n’Change she voted for when President Obama visits the city, however briefly, on Thursday. Since it’s hard to fire an unpaid volunteer, the Big Wigs from HQ showed up on Tuesday and sacked Beth Butler, longtime executive director of Louisiana ACORN. But there might | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  October 10th at 08:35 AM  | 

There’s quite a remarkable story in today’s New Orleans Times-Picayune. I wish I could cut and paste it in its entirety. It’s the story of two very different men that we chose to lead our country, and how, in the unlikely setting of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, we have a chance to compare and contrast their characters. The world knows one as | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  October 8th at 12:45 AM  | 

When you’re rich, really eight-figure inherited/married wealth rich, a recession means you might opt for the pre-owned Gulfstream IV over the new. If only to let the little people know that you feel their pain. When you’re poor, bad times threaten your job, your family, your health, or your life. Bad times hurt people at the margins. The liberal ruling class displays an astonishingly callous | Read More »

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  October 6th at 12:02 AM  | 

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that LA Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, a Democrat, is on ACORN, as we say, like gravy on rice. ACORN embezzlement was $5 million, La. attorney general says The organization, until recently headquartered in New Orleans, had tried to keep the details of an embezzlement quiet. The embezzler, Dale Rathke, was the one-time bookkeeper for the organization. His brother, Wade Rathke, | Read More »