The definition of a tough crowd? When Obama sycophants like Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Ezra Klein all give the President’s speech the worst reviews since the latest Ben Affleck movie, there’s not a whole heckuva lot for the MWU to add. Perhaps Olbermann said it best (didn’t think you’d ever see that line, did you?

I'm actually working on a longer climategate related post but his news just broke so I thought I'd make a quick mention of it. A 2007 U.N. report attributed North African food shortages to global warming. One of the key authors of the report has now come forward to say he cannot find any scientific evidence to back this claim. Fox News reports:

Not all oil execs are corrupt and/or cowardly enough to play along with the war on economic freedom and prosperity being waged behind the smokescreen of the global warming farce.

Ever since the 1970's one of the main goals of the Democratic party has been to reduce the amount energy consumed by the United States. This is not a bad idea in and of itself, but its urgency has always been ideological, rather than market-based. Cheap oil prices and Reagan-era deregulation foiled the Democrats' original efforts, but now, "global warming" has provided a convenient reason to continue, and expand, this effort.

While free trade yields a net positive to every nation that participates in it to any degree, tough economic times call for even more robust worldwide trade. With a failing economy it becomes all the more important for a country to maximize the use of its own resources and minimize the cost of the resources it brings in.

Earlier this month, the Heartland Institute sponsored the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York. The Conference differed from most such events in that it was devoted to science, not politics or propaganda. Heartland has now made the materials presented at the conference available online, here. You can review the agenda, watch videos of the keynote presentations, read transcripts of some of the speeches, and see the Power Points that were presented by the speakers.